Metro 2034
by WastelandStalker
Summary: The actual book written by Dmitry Gluckhovsky. Translated from German. Will (atempt) to do one chapter a week. Please be patient, this is my first translation and it will take me time.
1. Chapter 1

METRO 2034

Written by Dmitry Glukhovsky

Translated from german by Daniel Johns

The defense of the Sevastopolskaya (Chapter one)

They didn't return, neither on Tuesday, nor Wednesday, nor Thursday – the last appointed date. The outer guard post was manned around the clock, and if the guards would have just heard the faint echo of a cry for help or seen the weak reflection of a lamp on the wet, dark tunnel walls, there, where it goes to the Nachimovski prospect, they would have sent a strike team immediately.

Tensions grew with every hour. The guards – excellently armed soldiers and especially trained for missions like that – didn't close their eyes for a second. The stack of playing cards, with which they usually killed time through the missions, has been collecting dust for about two days in the drawer of the guardhouse. Their casual conversations gave away to short, nervous talks and now fatal silence reigned.

Everyone hoped to be the first to hear the echoing steps of the returning caravan. Too much depended on it.

All inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, whether five year old boy or old man knew how to handle weapons. They had transformed their station into an impenetrable fortress.

Even though they barricaded themselves behind machinegun-nests, barbed wire, yes even tank-stoppers made out of tracks, this impenetrable fortress was threatening to fall in a blink of an eye. Their Achilles heel was the shortage of ammunition.

Had the inhabitants of other stations experienced what the Sevastopolskaja had to endure on a daily basis, they wouldn't have wasted a thought about defending themselves, but fled like rats in flooded tunnel. Even the powerful Hanza, the federation of the stations in the ring line, wouldn't have ordered additional forces in case of an emergency – due to costs. Sure, the strategic importance of the Sevastopolskaya was enormous. But the price was too big.

So was the price for electricity. So high that the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya, that had created one of the biggest hydroelectric power stations in the metro, let themselves be supplied by the Hanza with ammunition and were even able to turn a profit. But many of them didn't just pay with bullets, but with a crippled, short live.

The groundwater was a blessing and a curse for the Sevastopolskaya. Like the waters of the river Styx flew around the rotten boat of Charon, so was the station surrounded by water. The groundwater gave a third of the ring line light and warmth, because it sets the shovels of dozens of water mills in motion. These had been created by skillful engineers of the station using their own plans, in tunnels, caves, underwater creeks, to put is blandly: where all the requirements were fulfilled.

At the same time the water gnawed incessantly on the pillars, gradually loosened the cement out of the cracks, passing by very close behind the walls of the station like if it was trying to lull the inhabitants to sleep. The groundwater prevented them to blow up unnecessary parts of the tunnels.

And exactly through these tunnels, hordes of nightmarish creatures move towards the Sevastopolskaya, like an endless poisonous centipede crawling into a grinder.

The residents of the station felt like the crew of a ghost ship on its way through hell. They were damned to fill the holes constantly, because the frigate has been leaking for a long time. And a harbor, where they could find protection and silence, wasn't in sight.

At the same time they had to fend off one attack after another, because from the Tschertanovskaya in the south and from the Nachimovski prospect to the north of the station, monsters crawled through the vents, appeared from the murky sewers or stormed out of the tunnels. The whole world seemed to be against the Sevastopolskaya and trying to erase their home station from the metro's map. But they defended their station with tooth and nail, like it was the last fortress in the entire universe.

But no matter how skillful the engineers could be, how tough and relentless the training of their fighters was – without bullets, without light bulbs for the spotlights, without antibiotics and bandages they wouldn't be able to hold the station. Of course they delivered electricity, and Hanza was willing to pay a good price. But while the ring line had other and own suppliers; the Sevastopolskaya wouldn't survive a month without supplies from outside. And their supply of bullets reached a dangerously low count.

Every week armed caravans were sent to the Serpuchovskaya to use their earned credit to pay the merchants of Hanza for everything that was needed and return immediately. As long as the earth would turn, as long as the underground rivers flowed and as long as the metro would hold, nothing would change that.

This time the return of the caravan had been delayed.

And so much so that there was only one explanation: Something unexpected must have happened, something terrible, something that even the heavy armed caravan guards, nor the long and good relations with the leadership of Hanza couldn't prevent.

The whole situation would have been a lot less unsettling when at least they could communicate with the ring line.

But something was wrong with the telephone line to the ring line; they had lost the connection on Monday and the squad that was sent to find the faulty part of the line returned without any results.

The lamp with the green lampshade was hanging low over the round table. It illuminated some yellowed papers on which graphics and diagrams were drawn on it in pencil. It was a weak bulb, maybe 40 watts, but not because you had to save electricity – that was certainly no problem in the Sevastopolskaya - but because the owner of the office didn't like glaring light. The ashtray was full of cigarette butts – all self-made and of bad quality. Biting, blue-grey smoke collected itself under the low ceiling.

The head of the station, Vladimir Ivanovitsch Istomin wiped his forehead, raised his hand and looked with his one eye at the clock – for the fifth time in half an hour. He crackled with his fingers and stood up burdensome. "A decision must be found. We can no longer delay it".

On the other side of the table sat an older, but strong built man with a lined camouflaged jacket and a worn blue beret. He opened his mouth to say something, but he had a coughing fit. Grumpily he narrowed his eyes and cleared away the smoke with his hand. Then he said: "Well, Vladimir Ivanovitsch, I repeat it again: We can't withdraw anymore forces from the southern tunnel. The pressure on the guards is enormous – even now they almost can't hold it. Last week alone they had three wounded, one of them heavy and that even with the fortifications. I won't sit here and watch how you continue to weaken the south. Especially when we need to have six scouts patrolling in the vents and the connecting tunnels at all times. And in the north we have to secure the arriving caravans, we can't spare a single fighter there. I am sorry, but you will have to search by yourself".

"You are the commander of the outer guard post, so you search!" growled Vladimir. "I deal with my own business. In one hour a group must leave. We both think in different ways. This isn't just about our problems here and now! What if something worse happened?"

"And I think, Vladimir Ivanovitsch that you are over reacting. We have two unopened crates of 5.45 caliber in the armory which would last us over one and a half week. And then I still have something at home under my pillow." The colonel smiled, so that his big, yellow teeth could be seen. "I can surely get another crate together. Bullets aren't our problem, but people"

"And now I tell you again what our problem is. If we don't get any shipments anymore, we will have to close the gates to the south, because without ammunition we can't hold the tunnels anyway. That means that we can't maintain two thirds of our mills anymore. Just after a week the first will break down and Hanza doesn't like a loss in current delivery at all. If they are lucky they will find a new supplier immediately, if not … but what do I care about the electricity! For almost five days now the tunnels are stone-dead and not a single pig in sight. What if something collapsed? Or broke through? What if we're now cut off?"

"Hold your breath. The power lines are all right. The counters are running, so Hanza seems to be getting their power. We would have noticed a collapse immediately. And if it was sabotage, than the power line would have been cut and not the telephone line. As for the tunnel – what are you afraid of? Even in good times nobody strayed away from the tunnels, got lost and ended up here. Alone at the Nachimovski prospect: Without an escort you can't get through. Foreign merchants haven't risked coming to us for a long time. And the bandits already know – after all we left one of them go alive every time. So don't panic".

"Easy for you to say", growled Vladimir Ivanovitsch, lifted the eye patch over his empty eye socket and wiped the sweet from his forehead.

"I'll give you three men", said the colonel, now a little milder. "More isn't possible, all things considered. And you should stop smoking. You know it's not good for me and furthermore you are poisoning yourself! I would prefer a tea to be honest …"

"But please, it is my pleasure." Vladimir rubbed his hands together, took the telephone receiver and barked:"Istomin here, Tea for me and the colonel."

"Let the officer on duty come as well", said the commander of the outer guard posts as he took off his beret. "Then we will clear the matter with the search party."

At Istomin's you would always get a special tea, a fine selection from the VDNCh, because on its way from the other end of the metro, Hanza taxes this favorite tea of Vladimir three times. That made it so expensive that Istomin wouldn't have allowed his weakness for the tea, if he didn't have had such good connections in Dobryninskaya. There he had served in the war with someone and so when the caravan leader returned back from Hanza, they always had a neat package for him. Istomin always picks it up personally. One year ago for the first time, a delivery didn't come and alarming rumors that threatened the entire orange line was being threatened – by apparently unknown mutants from the surface. They were almost invisible, practically invulnerable and could read your mind. It was said that the station had fallen, and Hanza fearing invasion, had blown the tunnel past Prospect Mira. The price of tea went through the roof and then for some time you couldn't get any, which made Istomin seriously worried. But a few weeks later the waves calmed down and the caravans continued to bring the famous tea along with bullets and light bulbs to the Sevastopolskaya. Wasn't that the main thing?

While Istomin poured the colonel's tea into the porcelain cup with the cracked golden edge he enjoyed, with closed eyes, the aromatic steam for a moment. Then he poured himself a cup, sank heavy into his chair, and started to stir a Saccharin pill into the tea with a silver spoon.

The men were silent, and for a moment the melancholic sound of the spoon hitting the cup was the only sound in the dark, tobacco smoke clouded office.

But it was suddenly drowned by a shrill ringing bell, coming out of the loud speakers and the tunnel: "Alert!"

The commander of the outer guard post jumped surprisingly agile from his place and stormed out of the room.

At first a lonely rifle shot sounded off in the distance, than a Kalashnikov joined in – one, two and than three.

Military boots hammered on the train platform and you could hear the bass voice of the colonel and how it – even from some distance away – was shouting the first orders.

Istomin reached out his hand after the shiny Militia-machine-pistol hanging on his cupboard, but then he held his back, sighed, sat back at the table and took another sip from the tea cup. On the opposite side of the table the colonel's tea steamed solitary and right next to his beret – he had forgotten it in his haste. The head of the station made a grimace and began again, this time half loud, to argue with the absent colonel. It was still about the same topic – but this time he found new arguments, that he didn't think of in the heat of the moment.

At Sevastopolskaya many dark jokes circulated over just why the neighboring station was called Tschertanovskaya; you could read the word "Tschort" (devil) too clearly out of its name. The mills of the hydroelectric plants extended rather far into its direction and although it was supposed to be abandoned, nobody in their right mind thought about occupying or acquiring it. The teams of technicians that had built the outer generators and regularly maintained them under supervision were always careful to not closer more than a few hundred meters to Tschertanovskaya.

Almost everyone that had an expedition like that before him and who wasn't a fanatic atheist secretly made a cross with his hands, and some even told their families goodbye.

The Tschertanovskaya was an evil station; everyone felt that who just approached her even half a kilometer. At first, in their naivety, the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya sent heavy armed scouting parties to extend their reach.

They came back, if at all, heavy injured and at least decimated by half. Then they sat stuttering, slobbering at the fire, so close that they clothes almost caught fire, but they never stopped trembling. They struggled to remember their experience – and one report is never like any other.

It is said, that beyond the main tunnel of the Tschertanovskaya, side tunnels plunged down into an enormous labyrinth of natural caves and allegedly were swarming with monsters. The people of the Sevastopolskaya called the place "the gate" – an arbitrary term, because nobody in the metro, who was still alive, has entered this part of the metro.

Although there was a story from when the line wasn't developed – supposedly a big recon unit passed through the Tschertanovskaya and discovered "the gate". Over a transmitter – a kind of cable telephone – the radio transmitter communicated that it fell down, almost vertical, at the end of a small corridor. They didn't get any further. In the coming minutes the leaders of the Sevastopolskaya heard shrill screams full of horror and pain. It was strange that the recon team didn't shoot – maybe they knew that conventional weapons wouldn't protect them. The last man of the group to be silenced was a mercenary without a conscience from the Kitai-Gorod station, who cut of the small finger of defeated enemies as a souvenir. He seemed to be some distance from the microphone that had slipped out of the hand of the radio operator, because you couldn't hear his words clearly. But after listening closely, the head of the station, understood what the man was sobbing while he was fighting for his life:

A simple prayer. One of these simple, naive prayers that religious parents teach their small children. Then the connection broke off. After this incident all further tries to reach the Tschertanovskaya were stopped. Yes, there have been even plans to abandon the Sevastopolskaya and return to Hanza. This cursed station seemed to be one of those borders that marked the end of human rule in the metro. The creatures that pushed against these borders brought the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya many problems, but they weren't invulnerable and a good organized defense could fend off the attacks with light to no casualties – as long as they had enough ammunition. Some of these monsters could only be stopped with high-explosives and high voltage traps. But in most cases, the guards had deal with less terrible – but still dangerous – creatures.

"There is another one! Up there, in the third pipe!"

The upper searchlight had broken out of the frame and dangled twitching like a hanged man on the cable, scattering its hard light at the scenery of fortifications: Sometimes it illuminated cowering silhouettes of creeping mutants, other times it hid them in the darkness or blinded the guards with its glaring light. Treacherous shadows raced around, became smaller and bigger, appeared as distorted faces so that you couldn't distinguish the humans from the mutants.

The post was in a good position, because in this place two tunnels ran into one. Right before the apocalypse the Metrostroi (Russian term, means workers in the metro) began their repairs, but they were never able finished it. The residents of the Sevastopolskaya had transformed the junction into a fortress: Two machine gun-nests, one and a half meters thick protection walls made out of sand bags, tank-stoppers out of tracks, high voltage traps and a carefully thought through alarm system. But when the mutants came in waves, like on this day, it seemed like this fortress would fall.

The machine-gunner mumbled in a monotone voice to himself. Bloody bubbles came out of his nostrils, and he looked surprised at the shiny red wet palms of his hands. The air around the Petscheng (it is a heavy machine gun) flickered in because of the heat, but now the damned thing was jammed. The gunner made a short grunting sound and leaned against the shoulder of his neighbor, a colossal fighter with a closed titan-helmet and turned silent. In the next second they heard a bloodcurdling scream: The creature attacked.

The man with the helmet pushed the blood-smeared machine gunner out of the way, stood up, raised his Kalashnikov and fired a short burst. The disgusting, sinewy, grey-skinned animal had already jumped; spread its claws and flight membranes, flying at them shrieking. The hail of bullets ended the scream and the dead animal continued to fly into the same direction. Then the 150-kilo body slammed into the sand bags and created a thick cloud of dust.

"That's it"

The seemingly never ending onslaught of creatures that came out of the sawed-off pipes on the tunnel ceiling, just a minute ago, stopped. The guards left their cover carefully.

"A stretcher! A doctor! Bring him to the station, fast!"

The colossal man that killed the last animal attached a bayonet to his assault rifle and approached the dead and injured creatures that were lying around on the battlefield leisurely. He pushed down the head of the first animal and ran the bayonet right through its eye, then repeated the process until he was sure that every creature was dead. Finally he leaned himself against the sand bags, looked to the tunnel, raised the visor of his helmet and took a sip out of his canteen.

The reinforcements from the station arrived after everything was already over. Even the commander of the outer guard posts came limping, breathing heavy, cursing at his illness and with his jacket open. "Were do I get three men now? Am I supposed to cut them out my body?"

"What are you talking about Denis Michailovitsch?" asked one of the guards.

"Istomin wants to send a recon team to Serpuchovskaya. He is afraid for the caravan. So where do I get three men now? Especially now …"

"Still nothing new?" asked the man with the canteen without turning around.

"Nothing", reassured the old man. "But not a lot of time has passed. What would be more dangerous? If we weaken the south now, there might be no one left to greet the caravan when it arrives.

The other one shook his head and went silent. He still didn't move when the colonel asked if any of guards would join the three men team.

There were enough volunteers. Most of the guards had enough from sitting around and couldn't imagine anything more dangerous than guarding the southern tunnels.

From the six volunteers, the colonel choose who he thought to be expendable. A reasonable thought: Nobody of the three ever returned to the station.

It had been three days since they had sent the recon team on the railcar. The commander thought that the others were whispering behind his back and looking at him with distrust. Even the most intense conversations ceased when he entered, and the tense silence that followed seemed to be a silent request: Explain it to us, justify yourself.

But he only did his job – ensuring the security of the outer guard posts of the Sevastopolskaya. He was a tactician, a strategist. They didn't have enough soldiers anyway. What right does he has to waste them on doubtful and senseless expeditions?

Three days ago he was absolutely convinced. But now, because every afraid, disapproving, doubting look was hallowing out his certainty, he was starting to doubt as well.

A recon team with light weapons didn't even need a day on the way to Hanza and back – even accounting for possible fire fights and delays through the independent stations.

The commander ordered to let nobody enter, closed the door to his small office, pressed his hot forehead against the cold wall and started mumbling. For the hundredth time he went through all possibilities. What happened to the merchants? What happened to the recon team?

The people of the Sevastopolskaya weren't afraid of humans – except maybe of Hanza's army. The bad reputation of the station, the inflated stories told by the few eye witnesses about how dear the inhabitants had to pay for their own survival – all that was spread by the merchants throughout the metro using word of mouth.

And soon that proved results. The leaders of the station realized quickly what advantages a reputation like theirs would bring them and took the fortifications of the station in their own hands. Informants, merchants, travelers and diplomats were allowed, with an official permission, to spread the most horrible lies about the Sevastopolskaya and the neighboring stations.

Only a few were able to look behind this curtain of smoke and lies and realize the true potential of the station.

In some isolated cases during the last years, unaware bandits tried to break through the outer guard posts, but the war machine of the Sevastopolskaya, lead by former generals, destroyed them without problems.

The recon team on the railcar had gotten clear orders: If they were to encounter any threats, they were to avoid any confrontations and return immediately.

Of course there was also the Nagornaya on the route – not a place as terrible as Tschertanovskaya, but still dangerous and fatal. And then the Nachimovski prospect, which doors to the surface couldn't be closed and had been overran by monsters from the surface. To blow up the entrance was no option for the Sevastopolskaya , because the stalkers were using the surface access of the Nachimovski prospect for their expeditions. Nobody dared passing through the station on their own, but until now every railcar was able to deal with the creatures that occasionally lurked there.

A cave in? The groundwater? An act of sabotage? A sudden raid by Hanza? It was the colonel, not Istomin that had to answer to the wives of the missing recon team, while they looked into his eyes unsettled and asking, hoping to find a promise or consolation. He had to explain it to the soldiers in the garrison. At least they didn't ask any unnecessary questions and were – until now – loyal to him. And in the end he had to calm down everyone who gathered at the stations clock after work and wanted to know how long the caravan had been gone. Istomin had said, that he had been asked why the lights of the station had been dimmed. Sometimes he had even been asked to bring the lights back to full power. Even though nobody had even thought about powering down the electricity: The lighting was set to maximum. It wasn't the station, but the hearts of the people that had gotten darker and even mercury lamps couldn't help against that.

The telephone line to the Serpuchovskaya was still dead. That took a feeling away from the colonel that was rare for the rest of the metro: The feeling of being close to other humans. As long as the communication was functioning, as long as caravans came and went regularly, as long as the journey to Hanza wouldn't take more than one day, all residents were free to come and go whenever they wanted.

Everyone knew that just five tunnels further the real metro began, civilization – humanity.

Arctic scientist probably felt the same when they agreed – out of scientific interest or because of the high wages – to endure the fight against the cold and loneliness for months. They were thousands of miles away from the mainland, but the radio remained at their sides at all times and once a month they could hear the sound of an airplane dropping off canned meat.

The ice floe, on which the Sevastopolskaya was, broke loose and every hour drove it further, into an ice storm, a dark ocean, into emptiness and uncertainty.

The wait went on and the colonels concerns turned into dark certainty: He would never see the three men from the recon team that he had sent to the Serpuchovskaya ever again.

To pull off another three fighters from the outer guard post and expose them to the same uncertain dangers was impossible. He couldn't afford their certain death, which wouldn't give them a way out either. He thought that is was still too early to close the southern tunnels, open the hermetic doors and form a big strike team. Why did he have to make this decision? A decision that was wrong either way.

The colonel sighed, opened the door a bit, looked around hastily and called the guard to him.

"Do you have a cigarette for me? This time it's the last, next time don't give me one, no matter how hard I plead.

And don't tell anyone"

When Nadia brought the pot with meat and vegetables the guards became alive again. Potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes were considered as delicatessen and except for some Kabas (means markets) in the Sevastopolskaya, the ring line and in polis nobody offered them anymore. That wasn't just because of the complex hydro cultures, the cultivation of the seeds and the high amount of electricity that was needed to spice up the menu of the soldiers, but almost nobody in the metro had enough electricity to do so.

Even the leaders of the station didn't get vegetables except for the holidays, because it was mostly grown for children. Istomin had to argue heavily with the cooks and convince them to add a few grams of potatoes and tomatoes – to improve morality.

And as a matter of fact: When Nadia laid down her combat rifle and raised the pot's lid, the wrinkles on the faces of the guards started to get smoother immediately. Nobody would have wanted to talk about the missing caravan or the lost recon team now – it would have ruined their appetite.

An older man with a cotton wool jacket and small metro emblems on it, stirred around the potatoes in his bowl and said smiling: "Today I had to think about the Komsomolskaya the entire day. I would really like to see it again. Those mosaics! The most beautiful station in all of Moscow, I think"

"Oh stop it Homer" said an unshaven, fat man with a Russian hat. (The one that they wore often when it was cold)

"You lived there and it is obvious that you still like it. But what about the stained glass at the Novoslobodskaya?

And the wonderful pillars and the ceiling fresco at the Mayakowskaya?"

"I always liked the Ploschtschad Revolyuzii" admitted a shy but no longer young man appointed as a sharpshooter. "I know it is stupid, but I liked those dark sailors and pilots, the border patrols with the dogs … even when I was a child."

"I don't think it is stupid at all", agreed Nadya while she collected the scraps of the stew. "Especially some of the male statues were very handsome. Hey brigadier! Get on it or you won't get anything!"

The tall, broad-shouldered fighter who sat alone, approached with leisurely steps the campfire, took his ration and returned to his place – if possible close to the tunnel, and if possible as far away from the people.

The fat man pointed his head at the broad back of the man, who just returned into the darkness and whispered:

"Does he ever go to the station?"

"No, he has been sitting here for over a week" answered the sharpshooter as silent as the other man. "He sleeps in a sleeping bag … Maybe he needs it. Three days ago, when the creatures almost devoured Rinat, he killed every last of them. With his own hands. For fifteen minutes.

When he returned, his boots and rifle were full of blood. And he looked very satisfied doing it."

"That's not a human, but a machine", said the thin machine-gunner. "I wouldn't like to sleep near him. Did you see what happened to his face?"

The old man, that was called Homer, shrugged his shoulders and said: "Strange, I really only feel safe when he is around. What do you want from him? The guy is alright, he just got hit. For what do we need beauty, it is for the stations.

And by the way: Your Novoslobodskaya is the tip of a mountain of bad taste. And I can't even watch those stained windows when I am sober … stained windows, laughable!"

"And a Kolcho-mosaic over half the ceiling is no bad taste?"

"Please tell me where you saw a Kolcho-mosaic in the Komsomolskaya?"

Now the fat man got going. "The whole damned soviet art has only one theme: The life on a Kolchose and our heroic pilots!"

"Seryoscha, let the pilots out of it", warned the sharpshooter.

Suddenly a hollow, deep voice said: "The Komsomolskaya is shit and the Novoslobodskaya as well"

The fat man was so surprised that he wasn't able to say a single word and he starred at the brigadier who was still sitting in the dark. The others stopped talking as well. The stranger did almost never participate in any conversations.

Even when someone asked him something, he answered, if at all with one word.

He still had his back turned at them, continuously looking into the mouth of the tunnel. "At the Komsomolskaya the ceiling is too high and the pillars are too thin, the whole station lies in the open. Also it is very hard to barricade all passage ways. And at the Novoslobodskaya all of the walls have cracks, it doesn't matter how often they repaired them. You can destroy the entire station with one grenade. And the stained windows are already broken. Way to brittle"

You could have argued with this kind of critic very good, but nobody dared to raise their voice. The brigadier was silent for a while, than he said casually: "I am going to the station. Come with me Homer. Shift change in one hour. Arthur you are in command"

The sharpshooter stood up hastily and nodded his head, even thought the brigadier couldn't see him. Even the old man stood up and gathered his possessions, even though he wasn't finished with eating. When the fighter returned to the campfire he was already in full gear and carrying his enormous bag.

While the unlike men – the colossal brigadier and the thin Homer – gradually entered into the lit part of the tunnel, the sharpshooter followed them with his eyes. Then he rubbed his cold hands together and realized he was shaking.

"Somehow I'm feeling cold. Put more coals on the fire"

On their way the brigadier didn't speak a single word. He only asked if Homer really once had been working in the metro and been driving a train. The old man looked at him with a distrusting look at first, but then he nodded his head.

At the Sevastopolskaya he always said he had been driving trains, but he never mentioned that he used to maintain tracks before that, he was a little bit embarrassed about that.

The brigadier greeted the guards with a military salute.

Those stepped out of his way and he entered the office of the head of the station without knocking. Istomin and the colonel stood up surprised from their chairs and walked into his direction. Both looked tousled somehow, tired and lost.

While Homer remained shyly at the entrance, stepping from one leg onto the other, the brigadier took off his helmet, put it right on top of Istomins papers and scratched his clean-shaven head. You could see once again how badly distorted his face was: The left cheek had contracted like after a heavy fire injury, the eye above it was a small crack and a big violet scar ran from his mouth to his ear. Although

Homer knew this sight; it still ran cold down his back, like he had seen it for the first time.

"I will go to the ring line myself", said the brigadier.

He hadn't even greeted any of them. Deep silence followed. Homer already knew that the man was an extraordinary fighter and that had earned him a special reputation with the leaders of the station. But it took him until now to realize that compared to other inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya the brigadier didn't follow orders. He wasn't waiting for a permission of the two old and exhausted men; it almost seemed like he was giving them orders and expected them to follow them. And again – how many times now? – Homer asked himself: Who was this man?

The colonel looked at Istomin. His face darkened as if he wanted to argue, but he didn't. "Whatever you want, Hunter", he said. "Nobody can talk you out of it anyway."


	2. Chapter 2

Return (Chapter 2)

Homer listened. Hunter. He had never heard that name at the Sevastopolskaya. It sounded like a nickname – like his own, of course he wasn't called Homer, but Nikolai Ivanovitsch. They named him after the creator of the Greek epics, because he loved stories and rumors of all kind.

"Your new brigadier", said the colonel to the guards in the southern tunnel two months ago. They looked at the broad-shouldered man in the Kevlar armor and the heavy helmet with distrust and curiosity. He just looked at them indifferent and returned to the fortifications like if he cared more for them but the men he commanded. He shook the hands of those who came to introduce themselves, but didn't speak a word. He nodded his head silently, remembered their names and puffed blue smoke in their faces like he wanted to keep them at distance. His lifeless eye shimmered in the shadow of his folded up visor. Nor then or later the guards dared to ask for his name and so he remained "the brigadier". It seemed that the station had hired a mercenary that didn't need an own name.

Hunter.

While Homer stood in the entrance of Istomin's office undecided he formed the strange word silently with his lips. It didn't fit for a human – more for a middle-Asian Sheppard-hound. He couldn't suppress a smile: Actually there had been such dogs here. How did all this come to his head?

A militant race, with a shortened tail and ears directly on the head – nothing superfluous.

But the more often he said his name, the more he thought that he knew it. Where had he heart it? It probably got stuck in the endless stream of legends and rumors and had sunken to the ground of his mind. Meanwhile a thick layer of names, facts, rumors and numbers had appeared in his mind – all that useless data about the lives of other humans that Homer had always listened to eagerly and tried to remember faithfully.

Hunter … a criminal with a price on his head from Hanza? Homer threw a stone into the dim lake of his mind and listened. No. A stalker? Didn't match his appearance. A field commander? More like it. And apparently a legend as well. Homer studied the face of the brigadier in secret. The name of a dog suited him surprisingly good.

"I still need two men. Homer comes with me, he knows these tunnels" The brigadier didn't ask for his approval and nor did he turn to him.

"And a runner, a currier. I will leave today". Istomin nodded his head, but then he gave the colonel an asking look.

He mumbled his approval, even though he had fought about the men for the unit with the commander for all these days. Homers opinion didn't seem to interest anyone, but he didn't think about protesting at all. Despite his age he had never refused any missions like this one. He had his reasons.

The brigadier took his helmet from the table and moved to the exit. He held the door for a moment and said into Homers direction: "Say goodbye to your family. Arm yourself for a long march. Don't take ammunition with you; you'll get it from me"

Then he disappeared.

Homer ran behind him to at least find out what is going to await him on this expedition. But when he stepped on the train station he saw that hunter had already left with big steps. It was pointless to try to catch up to him. Homer looked after him and shook his head.

Against his habit the brigadier didn't put on his helmet. Maybe he was in thoughts or he needed more air. He passed a few young girls that sat on the train platform. They were pig shepherds on a break. Suddenly one of them whispered:"Look girls, what a zombie"

"Where did you dig him up?" asked Istomin. Relieved he sank into his chair and reached for a package of papirosso-paper.

The weed that was smoked in this station with joy had been allegedly found by a stalker near the Bitzewski Place.

One time the colonel had held a Geiger-counter at the package of "tobacco" and it really started to tick.

After that he decided to stop smoking immediately and the coughing that had haunted his nights with the possibility of lung cancer became less frequent. Istomin on the other hand refused to pay the story about the radiation to much credit. And he wasn't so wrong – in the entire Metro there was almost nothing that didn't radiate more or less.

"We have known us forever" replied the colonel unwillingly. After a short break he added:"Back then he was different. Something must have happened to him"

"According to his face something has happened to him for sure"

Istomin coughed and looked nervous to the entrance as if he feared hunter could hear his words.

The commander of the outer guard posts didn't want to complain that the brigadier had emerged out of the mist of the past so suddenly; ultimately he had transformed himself into the most important support of the southern guard post in no time. But Denis Michailovitsch still couldn't believe the return of his old friend entirely.

The news of hunter's terrible and strange death had spread like an echo through the tunnels last year. And when he appeared in front of the colonel's door without warning, he had made a cross with his hand. How he had passed the guard posts without being noticed – as if he had walked right through the fighters – increased his doubts that everything was happening without something supernatural intervening.

The silhouette, which he saw through the peephole, was familiar to him: Broad shoulders, the shaved head, and the slightly dented nose. But the nightly guest remained where he was; had his head, oddly, slightly turned to the side and didn't try to break the tense silence. The colonel looked at the bottle of sweet wine on his table with regret, sighed deeply and unlocked the door. His codex demanded that he helped everyone of his own kind – regardless if they were alive or dead.

Hunter looked up at first when he stepped through the door. Now it came apparent why he had turned away the other side of his face. He had probably feared that the colonel wouldn't have recognized him otherwise. Denis Michailovitsch had seen much while commanding the garrison – unlike in his wild years – it seemed to him like an honorably pension now, but hunters wound still got to him.

Then he laughed insecure, like if he wanted to excuse his undisciplined behavior.

The guest didn't even show a hint of a smile. In this night he didn't smile a single time. His terrible wounds had healed in the last months, but this man had nothing in common with the Hunter that Denis Michailovitsch remembered.

He didn't lose a single word about his miraculous rescue, his long absence and he didn't seem to hear the amazed questions from the colonel as well. Rather he asked Denis Michailovitsch to tell nobody of his return. Would have the colonel followed his commons sense he would have informed the elders right away – but there was an old debt that he had to repay hunter and so he let him in peace.

Nonetheless Denis Michailovitsch started to research in secret. Truly, everybody thought that his guest was dead.

He wasn't involved in any crimes nor was he being sought-after. They had never found hunters body – that was for sure – otherwise he would have surely tried to contact them. The colonel agreed.

But he appeared, to express it better: his vague – and in those cases normal – shadow appeared in a good dozen half true myths and stories. It seemed he liked his role and kept his companions believing that he was dead.

Denis Michailovitsch remembered his old debt and came to the only conclusion: He relaxed and played the game.

When others where with them he never used hunters real name. He only told Istomin the truth, but didn't go into detail. But not many cared, because the brigadier had earned his daily ration of soup many times over. He guarded the posts in the southern tunnel day and night; at the station he appeared maybe once a week – on bath day. And even if he just appeared in this hell to hide from his pursuers, Istomin didn't mind. He knew to appreciate the service of legionnaires with dark pasts – the only thing that he demanded from them was to fight and in this case that wasn't a problem at all.

The guards that had complained about the condescending nature of the new brigadier became silent after the first battle. When they saw how methodical, sunken in some kind of cold frenzy, he destroyed everything that there was to destroy, everyone came to their own conclusion.

Nobody wanted to become his friend, but everyone followed his orders without any complains, so that he never had to raise his dump and broken voice. There was something in his voice, something like a hypnotizing sound of a snake and even the head of the station nodded his head obedient whenever he talked to him – even if he hadn't finished talking, just in case.

For the first time in ages the air in Istomin's office felt a lot lighter – as if a silent thunderstorm had passed, created by the strong tension. There was no more reason to argue, because there was no better fighter than Hunter. But even when he died in the tunnels there would be no other option for the Sewastopolskaya.

"Should I order the preparations for the operation?" asked Denis Michailovitsch.

"You got three days. That should be enough"

Istomin closed his lighter and his eyes. "We can no longer wait for them. How many people do we need?"

"The strike team is ready. I will take care about the second one, which should be another 20 men. When we don't hear anything from them after the day after tomorrow", he pointed his head at the exit, "then you have to make everybody ready to leave. We will try to break through"

Istomin raised his eyebrows but didn't answer; he just kept smoking his self-made cigarette. Denis Michailovitsch picked up some of the papers and started circling names, using a system that only he understood.

To break through? The colonel looked past Istomin's grey neck and through the tobacco smoke at the map of the Metro that was hanging on the wall. Yellow, dirty and covered with small signs this plan was a chronicle of the last century. Arrows for recon missions, circles for sieges, stars for guard posts and exclamations marks for forbidden zones.

Ten years had been documented in this plan, ten years, with not a single day without blood spilling.

Under the Sevastopolskaya, right behind the station named Juschnaya the markings stopped. As far as Istomin could remember, nobody had ever returned from there. The line ran down with a lot of white areas, like one of the old maps that the first Spanish conquerors had when they arrived on the shores of India. Like a branched root. But a conquest of the entire line was too big for the people of the Sevastopolskaya – no exhaustion by the irradiated people would have been enough.

And now the white fog of uncertainty covered their godforsaken line that went on to Hanza, to humanity. When the colonel is going to order the people to arm themselves soon, nobody is going to refuse the order. At the Sevastopolskaya the war for the destruction of mankind, which had lasted for two centuries, had never stopped for a minute. If you live long enough in the face of death, fear makes place for fatalism, talismans, believes and instincts.

But who knew what waited for them between the Nachimovski prospect and the Serpuchovskaya? Who knew if you could break through this mysterious obstacle or if there was still something behind it that was worth fighting for?

Istomin thought about his last trip to the Serpuchovskaya: Markets, homeless on benches and those who still had something, sleeping behind curtains. This station didn't produce anything; they didn't have any animal farms or greenhouses. The residents of the Serpuchovskaya were thieves but they were smart. They lived from speculation, sold expired goods that they had bought from late caravans for almost nothing. They also offered the inhabitants of the ring line services that could have brought them in front of the courts at Hanza. This station was a parasite, a fungus, a growing tumor inside the powerful Hanza.

It was the last union of rich trade stations, appropriately named after the German model, a stronghold for civilization in the Metro. Everything else sank into barbarism and poverty. There was a real army in Hanza, electrical light and even in the poorest parts a piece of bread for everyone that had earned the much sought after stamp of citizenship.

Even on the black market those cost a fortune, and if the border patrol caught somebody with a fake passport it would have cost you your head.

Hanza owed its wealth and power to its extraordinary place: The ring line united all other lines of the star formed complex together and opened up the possibility to switch from one line to any other line. Traveling merchants that brought Tea from the WDNCh, trolleys that brought ammunition from the weapons forges of Baumskaya – they all unloaded their cargo at the nearest toll station of Hanza and returned back home. It was always easier for them to sell their goods a little bit cheaper than to embark on a hunt for higher profits throughout the whole Metro. It could possibly be fatal.

It sometimes happened that Hanza affiliated neighboring stations, but mostly those were left to their own fate – a tolerated grey area, where deals were made by them which the leaders of Hanza didn't want to get involved in. Of course those "Radial stations" where filled with Hanza's spies, and to be exact – the stations had been bought a long time from the business men of Hanza. But they remained, formally, independent. So was it was with the Serpuchovskaya.

In one of the tunnels between this station and the Tulskaya a train had broken down on that day a long time ago. Istomin had marked the place with a catholic cross, because the wagon that stood in the midst of the tunnel and was inhabited by members of a sect. They had transformed this lifeless part of the tunnel into an oasis in a black desert.

Istomin had nothing against the sect. Truly their missionaries lingered in the neighboring stations, trying to save fallen souls, but these shepherds never came to the Sevastopolskaya nor did they hinder passing travelers – maybe with their missionary talk. The clean and empty tunnel between Tulskaya and Serpuchovskaya were preferred by the caravans.

Once again Istomin looked along the line. The Tulskaya? Their residents lived from what the bypassing convoys of the Sevastopolskaya and the smart merchants from Serpuchovskaya left behind. They repaired every possible technical piece of scrap metal and others searched for day jobs. For days they sat there and waited for one of the foremen offering slave labor. They were poor as well, but at least they didn't have the greasy crook look in their eyes like the people from the Serpuchovskaya. And in this station there was order, dangers welds you together.

The next station was the Nagatinskaya. On Istomins plan it was marked with a short line, meaning that is was uninhabited. But that was only half the truth. Nobody remained their very long but shady folk, living like animals.

Absolute darkness reigned here and small groups hid from strangers. Only scarcely the dim shine of a campfire lit through the pillars and illuminated the dark figures that held a secret meeting. Only unknowing and brave individuals stayed overnight because not all of the inhabitants of this station were humans. In the whispering darkness of the Nagatinskaya you could sometimes see the grotesque silhouettes of creatures scouring in the dark. And sometimes the shrill scream of a homeless person filled the remaining with fear until the victim got dragged into a cave and eaten.

Further than to the Nagatinskaya nobody dared to come, so the area between this station and the strongholds from the Sevastopolskaya was an empty wasteland. It wasn't entirely empty though – and the scouts from Sevastopolskaya tried not to meet them.

But now something new has emerged out of the tunnels. Something unknown. Something that swallowed everybody that tried to pass through this supposedly explored route. How should Istomin know if his station, even though when every able resident picked up a weapon, would form an army big enough to deal with that? He stood up burdened, walked to the map and marked the area between the Serpuchovskaya and the Nachimovskaya prospect with a pen. Right next to it he placed a big question mark. He wanted to place it next to the word "prospect" but somehow it landed next to the Sevastopolskaya.

At the first glance you could believe that the Sevastopolskaya was uninhabited. No trace of army tents in the train station that served them as homes at most stations. But instead they had barricades of sandbags, which looked like big ant hills in the weak lights of the lamps. Those barricades were never manned and the quadratic pillars were covered with a thick layer of dust. Everything was built so that a stranger that passed through would think this station was abandoned.

But as soon as the unwanted guest just thought about staying here, he risked staying here forever. Than the machine-gun teams and the snipers, which stayed at the neighboring Kavochskaya, manned their posts in seconds and instead of the dim lamps, powerful quicksilver search lights on the ceiling were activated, burning the eyes of all invaders, humans or monster. Neither were used to the strong light.

The train station was the last carefully planned line of defense of the Sevastopolskaya. Their homes were located in the belly of this deceptive station – under the station. Under the enormous granite plate, invisible for stranger's eyes, there was another floor not much smaller than the station above, but divided into smaller cells. There were the lit, dry and warm apartments, the steady humming air filters and water purifier, hydroponic greenhouses … it seemed that the residents of this station felt only safe and comfortable when they retreated further into the ground.

Homer knew that the crucial battle didn't await him in the tunnel, but at home. While he walked through the narrow hallway, past the half open doors of the former service rooms were now the families of the residents of the Sevastopolskaya lived, his steps slowed down more and more. He actually should have thought about his tactic again, revisit his answers, time ran out.

"What am I supposed to do? Orders are orders. You know how the situation is yourself. They didn't even ask me.

Don't blow it out of proportion – that is ridicules! No I didn't volunteer. Refuse? Out of the question. That would be desertion, understand?"

He mumbled on and on, sometimes outraged and determent, sometimes gentle and pleading.

On the doorstep of his apartment he went over everything again. It seemed a scene wouldn't be avoidable, but he wouldn't back down. He made a dark look and opened the door ready for a fight.

From the nine and a half square meters apartment – very luxurious, he had waited for one for four years in some tent – was occupied by a two-story military bunk bed, a small neat dining table and another three big stacks of newspapers that reached to the ceiling. Would he have been an old bachelor that mountain would have already buried him. But fifteen years ago he had met Yelena, who tolerated the dusty old paper in their small apartment, kept them in order and away from the stove; otherwise this mountain would have transformed itself into to a papery Pompeii long ago.

She also tolerated so many other things. The endless alarming parts from newspapers with titles like "The arms race goes on", "Americans test anti-rocket system", "Our rocket shield grows", "Farewell to peace" and "The time for patience is over" that covered all of the walls like wallpaper; him staying all night hovering over a stack of notebooks, a gnawed on pen in his hand – using electrical light instead of candles, no option with all the newspaper around; his jesting nickname, that he carried with pride, but that evoked a joking smile by everyone else that said it.

She tolerated so much, but not everything. Nor his juvenile eagerness, that brought him into the middle of a storm every time, only to see what it was like there – and that with almost 60 years! Nor the ease with what he accepts all the orders from above, without thinking about the last expedition that had almost cost his life.

If he had died … he didn't want to think about it.

When Homer left for guard's duty once a week, she never remained in the house. She fled with her troubled thoughts to the neighbors or went to work, even if she didn't had to – it didn't matter where, everywhere was fine if it distracted her from thinking that her husband had already died, laying on the ground, dead and cold. She thought that his typical male composure regarding death was stupid, egoistic, yes even criminal.

Fate had wanted it that she had already returned from work to change her clothes. She had put her arms through the sleeves of her patched jacket when he entered. Her dark, slightly grayed hair – she hadn't even turned 50 – was tousled and you could see fear in her brown eyes. "Kolya … did something happen? I thought you had guard duty till late in the night?

His courage to start his argumentation dissolved immediately. Of course this time others were responsible, he could have said that they forced him, with clean consciences. But now he hesitated. Maybe he should calm her down first and mention it later – casually – during dinner?

"I am asking just one thing from you: Don't lie to me" she warned him, after she had seen his wandering eyes.

"Lena" he started. "I have to tell you something …"

"Did somebody …" She asked the most important, most feared question right away. Did somebody die, but she didn't spoke it out loud, like if she feared that her words would make it happen.

"No! No …" Homer shook his head and added: "The freed me from guard duty. They are sending me to the Serpuchovskaya. Don't think it will be dangerous"

"But …" Yelena didn't know what to say. "But that is … did they already return, the …"

"It is all nonsense" he interrupted her hastily. "There is nothing". The conversation turned into an unexpected direction. Instead dealing with curses that he is trying to play a hero and wait for a good moment of reconciliation, he now had to face a far harder test.

Yelena turned away, stepped to the table, put the salt from the table somewhere else and smoothed a wrinkle in the tablecloth. "I had a dream …" she stopped and cleared her throat.

"You always have one"

"A bad one" she said stubbornly. Then she started crying.

"What? What am I … it's an order." He stuttered and stroked over her fingers. He realized that his tirades weren't worth a cent now.

"The one-eyed should go himself! She called out angrily and moved her hand away. "Oh that devil with his beret! They can only boss around others … What does he have to lose? He is married to his rifle! What does he know?"

When you made a women cry, the only thing left is to hold her in your arms. Homer was ashamed of himself, he was really sorry. But it was too easy to give in now, to swear that he won't follow that order, to calm her down and dry her tears – and to remember this missed chance forever. Maybe the last chance in his long life.

So he remained silent.

It was time to gather the officers and instruct them further. But the colonel was still sitting in his office. The cigarette smoke didn't even bother him anymore, but is still tempted him.

While the commander of the station moved his finger along the line of the Sevastopolskaya on his map of the Metro and was whispering to himself, sunken in thoughts, Denis Michailovitsch tried to understand what was behind Hunters mysterious return at the Sevastopolskaya. Why did he decide to settle down here and why did he wear his helmet in public almost all the time? That all meant that Istomin was right: Hunter was hiding from something and he had chosen the southern guard post as his hiding place. There he replaced a complete brigade and had become irreplaceable. Whoever demanded his return, whatever price had been placed on his head, nor Istomin or the colonel would have given him up.

His hiding place was brilliant. There were no strangers at the Sevastopolskaya and compared to other caravans that traveled to the "big Metro", everyone passing through this station kept their tongue behind their teeth. In this small Sparta that desperately held on to their small piece of earth on the end of the world, it was the most important thing to be reliable and relentless in battle. Here secrets still meant something.

But why did Hunter give all this up again? Why did he travel to Hanza out of his free will and risked being recognized? He had volunteered for this operation; Istomin wouldn't have dared to think about appointing it to him. It probably wasn't the fate of the lost recon unit that interested the brigadier. He didn't fight for the Sevastopolskaya because he loved the station so much, but because of his own reasons that were only known to him.

Maybe he had to fulfill an assignment? That would explain a lot of things: His sudden appearance, his secrecy, the stamina with which he holds the guard post and of course his decision to leave for the Serpuchovskaya immediately.

But then why did he forbade him to inform the others? Who could have sent him expect for them?

No, that was impossible. He was one of the Order. A man that dozens, if not hundreds of people – including Denis Michailovitsch – owed their lives to, wouldn't be able to commit treason.

But was this Hunter that had appeared out of the void the same? If he worked for somebody did he receive a signal?

Did that mean that the disappearance of the recon unit was no accident, but a well planned operation? And what part did the brigadier play in all of this?

The colonel strongly shook his head, as if he wanted to shake away his suspicions that hang on him like blood eels, becoming bigger and bigger. Why would he think this about a man that saved his live? Hunter had served the station without any mistakes and he had never given him the slightest reason for doubts. Thus Denis Michailovitsch forbade himself to think about the brigadier as a deserter, spy or something else.

He had made his decision. "Another tea and then I will go to the boys" he said overly energetic and snapped his fingers.

Istomin rose from his Metro plan and smiled tired. He wanted to dial the number for the adjutant when the telephone ringed. Both were startled and looked at each other. They hadn't heard that sound for a week. If the officer on duty wanted something he knocked on the door and there was no one else in the station that was able to call the foreman directly.

"Istomin here" he answered carefully.

"Vladimir Ivanowitsch! The Tulskaya is on the phone" he heard the hastily voice of the adjutant, "but the connection is very bad … probably our men … but the connection"

"Connect me already!" Istomin screamed into the receiver and hammered his fist on the table with such force that the telephone ringed in pain.

The adjutant turned silent immediately. Istomin could hear a ringing sound, then static and then he heard a distant, almost unrecognizable voice.

Yelena had turned her face towards the wall, to hide her tears. What could she still do to hold him back? Why did he always reach for the first possibility to leave the station? His miserably excuses "Orders from above" and "Desertion" – she had heard them a hundred times. What wouldn't she have given, wouldn't have tried to get rid of his nonsense in these 15 years? But once again it drew him to the tunnels, as if he thought to find something other than darkness, emptiness and doom in it. What was he searching for?

Homer knew exactly what she thought, as if she had spoken it out loud. He felt miserably, but it was too late t retreat. He opened his mouth to say something excusing, something warm, but he remained silent, with every of his words he would just added oil to the flame.

Over Yelena's head Moscow cried. A carefully framed color-picture of the Tverskaya Uliza, shining through the translucent midsummer rain, cut out of a shiny almanac, was hanging on the wall. A long time ago, when he was able to move through the Metro freely, all of his fortune was made up by his clothes and this one picture. Others carried crumpled, torn out pages from man oriented magazines in their pockets. But for Homer that wasn't a replacement. But this picture reminded him of something unspeakable beautiful … something that has been lost forever.

Helplessly he whispered: "Forgive me", stepped out into the hallway, closed the door carefully behind him and sat himself in front of his apartment. The door of the neighboring apartment was open and two sickly pale children played on the doorstep – a boy and a girl. When they saw Homer they stopped. The patched up teddy bear, about whom the children had argued just one second ago, fell to the ground.

"Uncle Kolya, uncle Kolya! Tell us a story! You promised to tell us one when you returned!"

Homer couldn't hold back a smile. He forgot the argument with Yelena immediately. "About what?"

"Headless mutants!" screamed the boy excited.

"No! I don't want mutants!" said the girl shocked.

"They are so terrible, they scare me!"

Homer sighed: "What story do you want, Tanyuscha?"

But the boy answered before her: "Than about the fascists! Or the partisans!"

"I want the story about the Emerald city!" said Tanya and smiled.

"But I told it yesterday. Maybe about the war of Hanza against the Reds?"

"About the Emerald city, about the Emerald city!" both yelled.

"Ok", agreed Homer. "Somewhere, behind the end of the Sokolnitscheskaya line, behind the seven abandoned stations, the three destroyed bridges and a thousand times a thousand doorways, there lies a mysterious, secret city. It is magical so humans can't enter. Wizards live there and only they can leave through their portals and enter the city through them again. On top of it, on the surface there is a castle, with towers where once the wizards lived. The name of the castle was …"

"Virsity!" Yelled the small boy and looked at his sister triumphal.

"University", homer nodded his head."When the war began and the atomic bombs were dropped on the earth, the wizards retreated into the castle and laid a spell on the entrance so that the bad humans, that started the war, wouldn't be able to reach them. And then they lived …"

Homer cleared his throat and stopped.

Yelena was leaning at the doorway, she had listened. He hadn't seen her when she stepped on the hallway.

"I'll pack your things", she said huskily. Homer walked over to her and took her hand. She clumsily laid his arms around him, it was embarrassing for her in front of the children, and asked silently: "You'll come back soon? Nothing is going to happen to you, right?"

For the thousandth time in his long life he realized how much women longed for promises – it didn't matter if he could fulfill them or not. "Everything is going to be alright"

"You are so old and you still kiss like you two just married", said the girl, made a grimace and the boy yelled after them cocky: "Daddy says that nothing of the story is true. There is no emerald city"

"Maybe", Homer shrugged his shoulders. "It is a fairy tale. What would we do without fairy tales?"

The connection was truly bad. A vaguely familiar voice fought against the terrible static: It seemed it was one of the recon team that they had sent to the Serpuchovskaya on the railcar.

"At the Tulskaya … we can …Tulskaya", he tried to give their position.

"Understood, you are at the Tulskaya", Istomin yelled into the receiver. "What happened? Why haven't you returned?"

"Tulskaya … here … you can't … everything but …"

Again and again parts of his sentence were swallowed by the static.

"What can't we do? Repeat, what can't we do?"

"Don't storm the station! Everything but storming the station!" it sounded out of the telephone clearly for once.

"Why?" asked Istomin "What by the devil is going on?"

But the voice was no longer to be heard. The static became louder and louder, than the line went dead. Istomin didn't want to believe it at first and kept the telephone in his hand.

"What is going on there?" he whispered.


	3. Chapter 3

Afterlife (Chapter 3)

That look that the guard on the northern post gave him, Homer would never forget it, as long as he lived. A look filled with admiration and melancholy, like for a fallen hero.

He could hear the salute shots of the honor regiment in the background. Like a farewell forever.

The living didn't get those looks. Homer felt like he climbed the shaky ladder of a small cabin of a plane, unable to land, that the Japanese engineers had upgraded to a hell machine. The emperor's flag with the red stripes flattered in the salty wind, on the summery airfield mechanics ran around, motors roared and a thick general with wet eyes, filled with the envy of the samurai, raised his hand in a military salute …

"Why are you so excited?" asked Achmed the dreaming elderly grimly. He on the other hand wasn't in a rush to find out what happened at the Sevastopolskaya.

His wife was standing near the train track, his oldest son on one hand, a screaming bundle in the other, holding it carefully.

"It is like a sudden banzai attack: You stand up and run directly at the machine guns", Homer tried to explain.

"Courage out of distress. In front of us lies a deadly fire …"

"No wonder why you call it a suicide-attack" growled Achmed and looked back to the tiny bright light at the end of the tunnel. "The right thing for somebody as crazy as you. A normal human doesn't run straight into a machinegun. Those heroics don't bring anyone far"

The old one didn't answer immediately. "Well, that's the thing. When you feel that your time is over you are starting to think: What remains when I am gone? What have I accomplished?"

"Hm. I don't know about you, but I have my children.

They won't forget me." After a short pause he added:

"At least not my oldest."

Homer wanted to reply upset, but Achmed's last sentence took the wind out of his sails. Of course it was easier for him to risk his old and childless hide. That boy on the other hand had his entire life in front of him and didn't need to think about achieving his immortality yet.

They had passed the last lamp; a glass can with a weak light bulb and a grit out of steel, full of burned flies and winged roaches. The chitin-mass moved almost unnoticeably: Some insects were still alive, trying to crawl out of a pit – like wounded death candidates trying to crawl out of a mass grave.

For a second Homer got stuck at the trembling, reaching, weakly-yellowish light, looking like it swelled out of graveyard's lamp. Then he took a deep breath and dove into the deep-black darkness that reached from the Sevastopolskaja to the Tulskaya – if the station still existed.

It seemed like the sad woman and her children had grown together with the granite plate. They weren't the only ones: A little bit next to them a one-eyed man with shoulders like a wrestler looked after the group that was vanishing into the darkness. Behind him a thin old man in a military jacket was silently talking with the adjutant.

"No we can only wait" said Istomin, while he crushed the self-made cigarette.

"You can wait" answered the colonel edgy, "I will do what I have to do"

"It was Andrej. The leading officer of the railcar that we sent." Vladimir Ivanovitsch could hear the voice out of the receiver once again – he couldn't get it out of his head.

"And?" The colonel raised his brow. "Maybe he talked under torture. There are specialists that new certain methods."

"Unlikely. You didn't hear his voice. There is something different going on. Something unexplainable. A surprise attack won't matter …"

"I can explain it to you" assured Denis Michailovitsch.

"At the Tulskaya there are bandits. They overpowered the station, killed some of our guys and took the others hostage. They didn't cut the power of course, because they need power as well and they didn't want to make Hanza nervous. They probably just turned off the telephone. How else would you explain that the telephone works some times and then it doesn't?"

"But his voice was so …" mumbled Istomin as if he didn't even listen to the colonel.

"Well how?" exploded the colonel. The adjutant carefully took a few steps back. "When I drive a nail under your fingernail then you will scream differently! And with pliers I could turn a bass into a soprano for life!" He knew what he had to, he had made his choice. Now after he had defeated his doubts he was on a new high and his fingers twitched to his sword. Istomin can complain as much as he wants.

Istomin didn't answer immediately. He wanted to give the colonel time to blow off steam. "We are going to wait", he finally said. It sounded assuring, but relentless.

Denis Michailovitsch crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Two days"

"Two days". Istomin nodded his head.

The colonel turned around on the spot and returned to the barracks. He had no intend to lose valuable hours. The commanding officers of the strike teams already waited for about an hour at the long table. Only two chairs were empty: His and Istomins. But this time they would have to start without their leaders.

The commander of the station hadn't realized that the colonel had already left. "It's strange how our roles have been swapped isn't it?" said Istomin sunken in thoughts.

When he got no answer he turned around and saw the helpless look of the adjutant. He made a hand gesture that he could go. He didn't recognize the colonel anymore, he thought. Normally he always refused to give up even a single fighter. He felt something, that old wolf. But could he rely on his nose this time?

Istomin's instincts said something completely different: Remain calm. Wait. The heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya would find some kind of mysterious and invincible enemy at the Tulskaya.

Vladimir Ivanovitsch searched his pockets, found his lighter and lit it. Smoke rings rose over him and he was looking directly into the mouth of the tunnel. Hypnotized – like a rabbit looking into the tempting mouth of a snake.

When he finished his smoke, he shook his head again and strolled back to his office. The adjutant broke free from the shadow of one of the pillars and followed him, but he kept his distance.

A dump rattling sound – a beam of light illuminated the first 50 meters of the ribbed tunnel; Hunters lamp was big and high-powered like a search light. Homer exhaled silently.

In the last minutes he thought that the brigadier would never turn on the light, because his eyes didn't it.

Since they had dived into the darkness he had nothing in common with a normal human being anymore. His movement was fluently and fast like of an animal. It seemed that he had only turned on the light for his followers, he only trusted his senses. He had put down his helmet and was listening to the sounds of the tunnel. Again and again. From time to time he inhaled the rusted air as if he could smell something, which only made his suspicions stronger.

Hunter stepped through the tunnel without making any sounds and he didn't look back. It seemed that he had forgotten their existence. Achmed who only accusingly had guard duty at the southern guard post and because of that didn't know the habits of the brigadier poked the old man in his side: What was going on with him? Homer spread his arms. How was he supposed to explain it to him in two words?

Why did he even need them? Hunter seemed to feel considerably securer in these tunnels than Homer. At the same time he would have thought himself to be the guide of the group. If he would have asked the old man he could have told him much about this region. Legends, but also true stories that were mostly more terrible and bizarre than the unlikely stories that the guards told themselves at the lonely guard fire when they were bored.

Homer had a different metro plan in his head – Istomin's map was nothing compared to it. He could have filled all the white parts with his own markings and notes.

Vertical shafts, open ones, even some operational service rooms and connecting lines like spider webs. As an example of his plan there was a junction between the Sevastopolskaya and the Juschnaya, so one station to the south, it ended like a gigantic hose at the gigantic train depot, the Warschavskoye that had gathered dozens of sidings like small veins.

Homer that had a holy awe for trains saw this depot as a dark but also mysterious place, like some kind of elephant graveyard, he could talk about it for hours, provided that there were listeners.

Homer thought that the section between the Sevastopolskaya and the Nachimovski prospect was especially difficult. Preclusions and a healthy human mind demanded that they stayed together, moved forwards slowly, carefully, kept watching the walls and the floor at all times.

You couldn't even keep the tunnel, where all vents and cracks had been bricked up and sealed by the construction teams of the Sevastopolskaya, behind you out of your sight.

The darkness had only been ripped open by their light for a short time and had already grown together. The echo of their footsteps was thrown back from the rips of the tunnel segments and somewhere in the distance a lonely wind howled through the vents. Big, heavy drops gathered in the cracks on the ceiling and fell down. Maybe they were only made out of water, but Homer preferred to move out of their way. Just to make sure.

In old times when the bloated monster city lived its fewer like life and the metro was nothing but a soulless traffic system for the restless people of the city, a young Homer that everybody just called Kolya, already walked with his flashlight and iron toolbox through the tunnels.

The way there was prohibited for mortals. The only things that were meant for them were around 150 polished marble pillars and tight wagons that were covered with colorful advertising. Even though they spent between two or three hours in the rocking trains of the metro, millions of people weren't aware that they only saw a tenth of this unimaginable big underground kingdom face to face. And so that they wouldn't start to think about its real extend or about where the inconspicuous doors and iron blockades, the dark side tunnels and the over passing that had been closed for months because of reparations lead, they turned their attention away with conspicuous posters, lead them with provocative but dumb slogans into nowhere and even chased them on the escalators with wooden advertising announcements per loud speaker.

It seemed like this to Kolya after he began to deal with secrets of this state within a state.

The colorful plan of the metro should convince curious minds that they dealt with a civilian object here. But in reality these lines in those happy colors were crossed by invisible lines of military tunnels that lead into government bunkers and military depots. Even some lanes were connected by a labyrinth of catacombs, out of the heiden times of the city.

When Kolya was very young and his country was too poor to compete with the ambitions of others, the bunkers and air raid shelters that had been build for judgment day collected dust. But with money people returned with bad intentions. Rusted, weighting tons, doors opened creaking, food and medicament supplies were renewed and air and water filters were brought back on the newest level. Just in time.

The job in the metro was like a welcome into the society of the freemasons. He felt like that because he came from a small town. Once an unemployed loner, now a member of one of the most powerful organizations that rewarded his humble service generously and brought him insight into the deepest secrets of the world order. He also liked the pay of his job; they didn't request much from future service men.

It took him some time to realize through his colleges hesitant explanations why the metro organization had to lure their employees with high wages and extra money for dangerous work. No it wasn't even for tight work shifts and the voluntary sacrifice of daylight. It was about totally different dangers.

Homer, a skeptical man, never paid much attention to the never dying rumors or even darker tells of the devils work in the tunnel. But one day one of his colleges didn't return from his site inspection of the service tunnels. Like the man all documents vanished that he had ever worked in the metro.

Only Kolya, still young and naïve didn't want to settle with the disappearance of his friends. Until one of the older employees took him to the side and whispered, looking around hastily, that they had "taken" his friend. Kolya realized just too well that something sinister was going on in the Moscow underground and that long before Armageddon broke over the huge city and destroyed all life with its flaming breath.

The loss of his friend and the initiation into this forbidden knowledge should have scared Kolya. He should have left his work and found a different one. But his arranged marriage with the metro had progressed into a passionate affair. When he was feed up with endless wandering through tunnels he let himself be trained as a substitute train driver and secured himself a firm place in the complex metro hierarchy.

The closer he got to know this ignored world wonder, the more nostalgic he looked at the antic labyrinth, this master less, zyclopic city, the on its head turned reflection of the surface of Moscow and fell in love with it. This from human hand created tartarus was worthy of a real Homer, at least the feather of a swift and it would have impressed him more than the island Laputa … But it was only Kolya that honored the metro in secret and sang clumsy of its greatness. Nikolai Ivanovitsch Nikolayev. Ridiculous.

It was possible to love the mistress of the cooper mountain, but the cooper mountain in particular? (Should be a Russian fable)

But this relationship was based on love on both sides and envy. It would rob Kolya of his family and safe his life.

Hunter suddenly stopped and Homer wasn't able to get up from his soft bed of memories fast enough and ran straight into the brigadiers back without slowing down. Without saying a word he pushed the old man back and stopped again, he lowered his head and held the distorted ear into the tunnel.

Like blind bats made its picture from their surrounding room it seemed that he perceived invisible sound waves as well.

Homer on the other hand felt something different: The smell of the Nachimovski prospect, a smell that you couldn't mistake for anything else. How fast they had gotten through the tunnel … Hopefully they didn't have to pay for being allowed to pass so freely …

As if he had heart homer thoughts, Achmed took his assault rifle from his back and switched the safety off.

"Who is there?" whispered Hunter suddenly to Homer.

Homer smiled in secret: Who knew what the devil had brought them? Through the wide open doors of the Nachimovski prospect horrible creatures feel through the ceiling like through a funnel. But there were also permanent residents in this station. Even though they were seen as not dangerous Homer felt about them in a special way: A sticky mixture of fear and disgust.

"Small … hairless", the brigadier tried to describe them.

That was enough for Homer: There they were. "Corps-eaters", he said silently.

Between the Sevastopolskaya and the Tulskaya, maybe in different regions of the metro, this curse had achieved a new literally meaning in the last years.

"They feed on flesh?" asked Hunter.

"More on dead flesh", answered the old one unsure.

These disgusting creatures – spiderlike primates – didn't attack humans; they feed on dead flesh that they had dragged down from the surface. And a big clan had made their nest at the Nachimovski prospect, the reason because you could smell the disgusting-sweet smell rotting flesh in the neighboring tunnels, in the station it was so heavy that it could make your head spin, was that they gathered dead bodies as food. Some wore their gasmasks before entering so that they could tolerate the smell.

Homer who remembered the special feature of the Nachimovski very vividly, reached hastily for his gasmask and put it over his mouth and nose.

Achmed that didn't have enough time to pack looked at it with envy and covered his nose with his arm. The miasma that grew in this station covered them, surrounded them and chased them forwards.

Hunter didn't seem to experience anything like them. "Is that toxic? Spores?" asked Hunter.

"The smell" said Homer under his mask.

The brigadier looked at Homer as if he wanted to make sure that he wasn't trying to make a joke on his expense.

Than the shrugged his broad shoulders and said: "So just the usual". He held his assault rifle more comfortable and made clear that they should follow him and continued with soft steps.

After maybe fifty meters an almost unnoticeable whispering joined the horrendous smell. Homer wiped the warm sweat from his head and tried to keep his galloping heart at bay. They were close.

Finally the shine of the lamp illuminated something, the broken lights of a train that tried so hard to fight against the rust, its headlights starring blindly into the dark; a shattered windshield … in front of them was the first wagon of a train that blocked the tunnel like a giant cork.

The train laid hopelessly dead for a long time, but every time he saw it he had the childish wish to climb into the dusty driver cabin, touch the buttons of the panel and to imagine with his eyes closed that he was rushing through the tunnel, behind him a garland of bright lit wagons, full of people, that read, slept, stared at the advertising and tried to hold a conversation over the sound of the rushing train.

"When the alarm signal atom is given, you are to go to the next station. There you are to man the station. The doors are to be opened. The civilian teams have to help with the evacuation of wounded and the hermetic closure of the metro stations"

For judgment day he had gotten clear and easy instructions. Everywhere possible they were followed. Most of the trains broke down on the tracks and fell into a lethargic sleep and then there where the survivors that instead of a few weeks, what had been promised to them, now had to stay there forever. Most of the trains had been completely dismantled for inventory and spare parts.

In some places they used them as homes, but Homer that viewed them as living beings thought that that was like vandalizing a corpse, as if they had stuffed his favorite cat.

In uninhabitable places like the Nachimovski prospect time and vandals had left their mark on the train but it remained intact.

Homer couldn't turn away. The rustling and hissing that approached from the station, faded into the background and once again he heard the ghostly howling alarm siren and then the deep signal of the train that spread the unheard message, once long, twice short: "Atom!"

Brakes squeaked and through the speakers came the confusing message: "Dear passengers, because of technical emergency the train can't continue its ride…"

Nor the train driver whispering into his microphone neither his assistant Homer knew the full extent of overwhelming hopelessness of this formal sentence. The exhausting creaking sound of the hermetic gates … they separated the living from the dead, once and for all. Protocol demanded that the doors had to be closed six minutes after the alarm had been sound and they had to be closed forever, it didn't matter how many people where still on the other side.

Those who resisted the closing of the gates were to be shot immediately.

Would a tiny militia soldier that normally chased homeless people and drunks out of the station be capable of shooting a man into his stomach because he resisted the ton heavy machine so that his wife with her broken heel would still be able to slip through? Would the feisty women with her uniform and her cap, who checked tickets and had only brought two things to perfection in her 30 years of service, to get in your way and to get people in line stop the for air gasping old man that was still trying to pass through the door?

The instructions saw six minutes for a human to become a machine. Or a monster.

The screaming of the women and the screams of the men, the unrestrained crying of the children, the sounds of the pistol and machine guns salves … Out of every speaker the request to remain calm sounded metallic and emotionless.

Somebody unaware read it because nobody that knew would be so controlled and indifferent in repeating the same sentence over and over again: "Please remain calm!" Crying, pleading … Again shots.

And exactly six minutes after the alarm, one minute before Armageddon – with the dump sound of a graveyards bell the doors closed. The sound of the bolts locking in place.

Silence.

Like in a grave.

To get around the wagon they had to move along the wall. The driver had braked to late, maybe he had been distracted by something on the track. They climbed upwards over an iron ladder and found themselves in a roomy hall. It had no pillars but a half-round ceiling with egg shaped holes for the lamps. The hall was big; it included the train station and both tracks with the trains. An unbelievable elegant, easy construction, simple and laconic.

Just don't look down, not under your feet nor in front of you.

Don't look what the station had become.

A grotesque meadow of corpses, where no one ever found peace, a terrible field of flesh, covered with gnawed off skeletons, rotting bodies and ripped off parts of corpses. Grotesque creatures had dragged down greedily everything they could find in their small kingdom, a lot more than they could eat as reserves. These reserves decayed and dissolved, but they were still growing.

The mountains of rotting flesh moved, ignoring the laws of nature, as if they breathed and from everywhere a disgusting scraping sound could be heard. The shine of the flashlight caught one of the strange creatures: Long nodular arms and legs, slack, wrinkled, hanging, hairless grey skin and a bent back. The dim eyes starring half blind around the room and the big ears moved like they had a life of their own.

The creature made a hoarse scream and retreated slowly on all limbs back through the open train door. As sluggish as this one the other corpse eaters started to climb down from their mountains of bodies. Angered they bared their teeth and growled at the group.

On two feet they wouldn't have been able to reach Homer to the chest and he knew that the cowardly creatures wouldn't attack a strong, healthy human. But the irrational horror that he felt for these creatures came with his nightly nightmares: Weakened and abandoned he was laying there alone in an empty station and the monsters came closer and. closer. Like a drop of blood in the ocean attracted countless sharks these creatures could feel the approaching death of a stranger and rushed to look at them.

The fear of getting old, said Homer condescending to himself. In his time he had read books about psychology. If they would just help him now.

The corpse eaters on the other hand weren't afraid of humans. To waste a single bullet for one of these harmless corpse eaters would have been considered a criminal waste at the Sevastopolskaya. The passing caravans tried to ignore them even though the creatures liked to provoke them.

At this station they had reproduced strongly and the more the group progressed, while bones broke under their boots with a disgusting breaking sound, the more corpse eaters abandoned unwillingly their meal and moved slowly back to their dwellings. Their nests were in inside the trains.

And for that Homer hated them even more.

The hermetic gates of the Nachimovski prospect were open. It was said that when you passed the station quickly you would only get a small dose of unhealthy radiation, but you couldn't stay there for long. So it came that some of the trains were still well preserved: The windshields and windows weren't broken, through the open doors you could see the dirty but intact seats and also the blue paint of the train was still there. In the middle of the hall was a true mountain of twisted bodies made up by unrecognizable creatures. When Hunter reached them he suddenly stopped.

Achmed and Homer looked at each other worried and tried to see where the danger came from.

But the reason for the delay was a different one. On the edge of the mountain of bodies two little corpse eaters gnawed on the skeleton of a dog– you could hear how they creaked and growled pleasurable. They weren't able to hide in time. Maybe they hadn't finished their meal or didn't understand the signals of their older creatures or their greed had overpowered them.

Blinded by the shine of the light, but still cowering, they started their slow retreat to next wagon when they both suddenly tipped over with a dump sound and hit the ground like two with bowels filled sacks.

Homer looked at Hunter surprised while he put his heavy army pistol with the long suppressor back into his shoulder holster. The face of the brigadier was as impenetrable and dead as always.

"Seemed like they had a lot of hunger" whispered Achmed. A little bit disgusted, a little bit curios at the dark puddles where the pulpy remains of their dead skulls laid.

"Me too" answered Hunter with an unclear voice and Homer winched.

Without turning around Hunter continued walking and Homer seemed to hear silent, greedy growling. It exhausted him, trying not to be tempted to put a bullet into the head of another creature! He talked to himself reassuring until he was the same again. He had to proof himself that he was a grown man that could control his nightmares and didn't have to act crazy. Hunter didn't seem to suppress his desire.

But what did he actually desire?

The silent demise of the two corpse eaters brought movement to the rest of the pack: The smell of fresh death chased away the boldest and slowest from the train track.

Slowly, croaking and whining they retreated to the two trains, squeezed themselves against the windows or gathered at the two doors and waited. But they didn't move.

The creatures didn't seem to feel anger and you couldn't recognize any intentions to avenge their killed brethrens or to fend off this attack. As soon as the group would leave the station they would eat the two killed corpse eaters without any hesitation.

Aggression is a trait of hunters, thought Homer. Who survives on dead bodies doesn't need it because he doesn't have to kill. Everything living must die some day and becomes food. They just have to wait.

In the shine of the lamp they could see their monstrous grimaces looking through the dirty-greenish windows, the tilted built bodies, their hands with long claws, it was like they viewed into a satanic aquarium. In absolute silence hundreds pairs of eyes watched every move of the small group, the heads of the creatures turned fully synchronized with the passing humans movement. The small miss births in their formaldehyde glasses must have probably looked at the visitors of Petersburg's art chamber the same way, if their eyes wouldn't have been sewed shut as a precaution.

Even though the hour of atonement for his godless view of the world came closer and closer for Homer, he couldn't overcome himself to believe in god or the devil. If there was a purgatory than he was looking straight at it.

Sisyphus was damned to fight against gravity, Tantalus sentenced to endure torture through eternal thirst. For Homer in his wrinkled train driver uniform there was a dead station waiting for him, with this monstrous ghost train, filled with its inhabitants, that reminded him of medieval gargoyles and the laughter and mocking of all gods that where seeking revenge. And when the train left the station the tunnel would transform itself, just like in the old metro-legends into a moebius band, a dragon eating it's on tail.

Hunter's had lost all interest in the station and its inhabitants. He left the rest of the hall behind him with quick steps. Achmed and Homer had problems keeping up with the hasting brigadier.

The old man had the wish to turn around, to scream and to shoot, to do anything that would scare this bold spawn away just like his heavy thoughts. But instead he followed with his head lowered and tried not to step on any rotting body parts. Achmed did the same as he did. While they fled the Nachimovski prospect nobody thought about looking back.

The ball of light from Hunters lamp flew from one spot to the next as if it followed an invisible acrobatic through a fatal circus but even the brigadier did no longer pay attention to what the light illuminated.

In the light of the lamp you were able to see fresh bones and a definitely human head that had been gnawed on, for a second and then they disappeared into darkness.

Right next to it, like a pointless shell laid a steel helmet and a Kevlar vest.

You could still see the with white color printed word on it: SEVASTOPOLSKAYA.


	4. Chapter 4

Ties (Chapter 4)

"Dad … dad! It's me, Sasha!" She loosened the straps of her father's helmet from his swollen chin. Then she reached for the rubber of the gasmask, pulled it from his sweaty hair and threw it away like a wrinkly, deadly-grey scalp.

His chest raised and lowered itself heavily, his fingers scrapped over the concrete and his watery eyes looked at her without blinking. He didn't answer.

Sasha laid a bag under his head and stormed to the gate. She pushed her thin shoulder against the enormous gate, took a deep breath and crunched her teeth. The ton heavy mountain of iron retreated reluctantly, turned around and fell groaning into its lock. Sasha looked it again and sank to the ground. One minute, all he needed was just one minute for him to catch his breath … soon he would return to her.

Every expedition cost her father more strength. It was almost hopeless in the face of their weak harvest. Every expedition shortened his life not by days, but by weeks, yes even months. But it was their need that forced him to do so. When they no longer had anything to sell, there was only one thing to do, eat Sasha's pet rat, the only thing in this hostile station and then shoot themselves. If he would have let her, she would have taken his place and would have gone. How often had she asked him for his gasmask so that she could go up on her own, but he remained relentless. He probably knew that this holey piece of rubber with its filled up filters wasn't any better than a talisman but he would have never admitted that. He lied that he knew how to clean the filters, even after hours of expeditions he acted like he felt fine and when he didn't want her to see that he was throwing up blood he sent her away to be alone.

It wasn't in Sasha's power to change something. They had driven her father and Sasha into this abandoned part of the metro, they had left them alive, not out of mercy, but out of sadistic curiosity. They must have thought that they wouldn't even survive a week, but the will and stamina of her father had provided them with what they needed and that they had survived for years. They hated them, despised them, but brought them food regularly. Of course not for free.

In breaks between expeditions, in these rare minutes when the two sat on the sparse lit fire, her father loved to talk about earlier times. Years ago he had realized that he didn't have to fool himself, but when he no longer had a future, than at least nobody could take away his past.

Back than my eyes had the same color as yours, he had said to her. The color of the sky … And Sasha believed to remember these days, these days when the tumor hadn't bloated his head and when his eyes hadn't faded, but when they shined like hers now.

When her father said "the color of the sky" of course he meant azure-blue and not the glowing red clouds of dust that reached over his head when he climbed to the surface.

He hadn't seen real daylight in over 20 years and Sasha didn't know it at all. He only saw it in his dreams, but he wasn't sure if what he saw was real. What experience people that are blind from birth: Dreaming from a world that is similar to ours? To they even see anything in a dream?

When small children close their eyes, they believe that the entire world has sunken into darkness; they believe that everybody around them is as blind as they are. In the tunnels humans are as naive as these children, Homer thought. He imagined that light ruled over darkness every time when he turned on his flashlight and then turned it off again. Even the most impenetrable darkness could be full of seeing eyes.

Since the encounter with the corpse eaters he couldn't think about anything else. A distraction. He needed a distraction.

Strange that Hunter hadn't known what waited for them at the Nachimovski prospect. When the brigadier turned up at the Sevastopolskaya two months ago, none of the guards could explain how a man with such extraordinary stature was able to pass every single of the northern guard posts unnoticed. It was their luck that the commander didn't want an explanation how Hunter got through without the noticing.

But when he didn't get to the Sevastopolskaya over the Nachimovski prospect, how did he get there? All other ways to the big metro had already been severed. The abandoned Kachovskaya line, in its tunnels they hadn't seen a single living being in the last years. Impossible. The Tschertanovskaya? Ridiculous. Not even a skilled and relentless fighter as Hunter would be able to fight himself through this cursed station. Also it was impossible to get there without showing up at the Sevastopolskaya first.

So the north, south and east were out of the question.

Now Homer had only one hypothesis left: The mysterious guest came from the surface. Of course all known entrances and exits of the station had been carefully barricaded and were guarded at all times, but … he could have opened one of the vents. The inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya didn't suspect that there was still somebody that had the intelligence to trick their warning system located in the burned concrete ruins. An endless chess board made out of several stories high apartment complexes that had been torn down by the shrapnel of war heads was already deserted and empty. The last players had already given up playing decades ago and left the distorted and scary figures crawling around on the surface. They now played their own game with their own rules. Looking at it from of the view of humanity, a rematch wasn't possible.

Short expeditions searching for everything useful that hadn't decayed over the last twenty years, hastily; shameful raids through their own houses were the only things they were still capable off. In rubbers suits that protected the stalkers from radiation they climbed up to search the skeletons of former buildings for the hundredth time, but nobody dared to fight the current inhabitant's determent enough to wipe them out.

You might shot a machine-pistol salve at them, retreat into a nearby dirty apartment and run straight back to the rescuing entrance of the metro when the danger had passed.

The old maps of the capitol city had lost every reference to reality. Where back then cars had been stuck in traffic for miles, now there were canyons covered in impenetrable black brushwood. Where once housing areas there were now swamps or just empty burned land.

Only the boldest stalkers dared to venture further than a mile from their entrances to the metro, most were satisfied with less.

The stations past the Nachimovski prospect – the Nagornaya, Nagatinskaya and Tulskaya – had no open entrances and the humans on those two stations didn't even think about going to the surface.

So from where in this wasteland hunter was supposed to have emerged from, was an absolute mystery for Homer.

But there was a last possibility where the brigadier could have come from. This possibility made the old atheist unable to breathe and he follow the dark silhouette of Hunter that moved through the darkness as if it didn't even touch the ground.

He came from underground.

"I have a bad feeling about this" said Achmed hesitantly and so quiet that Homer almost wasn't able hear him.

"It isn't the right time to be here. Believe me; I have traveled with many caravans. There is something brewing at the Nagornaya …"

The small groups of bandits that always retreated back as far as possible from the ring line right away after each raid. They took their breaks in dark stations but never dared to attack the caravans of the Sevastopolskaya.

The instant they heard the constant thunder of the studded boots, which announced the arrival of the heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya, they got out of their way immediately.

Not because of the bandits or the corpse eaters at the Nachimovski prospect these caravans were protected so well.

Their bone hard training, absolute fearlessness, their ability to close themselves to a iron fist in seconds and to destroy every possible threat in a hail of bullets, all that could have made the convoys of the Sevastopolskaya the undisputed rulers of the tunnels up to the Serpuchovskaya – if there wasn't the Nagornaya.

The horrors of the Nachimovski prospect were behind them, but nor Homer or Achmed felt the slightest relief. The seemingly inconspicuous, yes even ugly Nagornaya had become the end station of many that hadn't treated her with caution. Those poor schmucks that ended up at the neighboring Nagatinskaya coincidentally tried to stay as far away from the greedy mouth of the tunnels of the Nagornaya. As if that would save them. As if what crawled out of the tunnel, searching for prey, was to sluggish to crawl a little bit further and still chose a victim of its taste …

As soon as you entered the Nagornaya you could rely on nothing but your luck, because this station didn't play by the rules. Sometimes it let you pass silently and the travelers looked horrified at the bloody marks on the walls and pillars where someone had tried to climb up in their hopelessness.

And just a few moments after that the station could give a group a welcome, that loosing half of the men was considered as a victory.

The station was always hungry. It didn't favor anybody. It didn't let anybody explore it. For the inhabitants of the neighboring stations the Nagornaya embodied pure arbitrariness of fate. She was the most difficult challenge for all that embarked on their way from Sevastopolskaya to the ring line and the other way around.

"So many missing people … it couldn't just have been the Nagornaya alone" said Achmed with superstition, like many residents of the Sevastopolskaya he spoke of the Nagornaya like if it was a creature and not station.

Homer knew what Achmed meant. He had thought about it a lot of times if it couldn't have been the Nagornaya that was responsible for the missing recon team. He nodded his head and added:" If so I hope it suffocated on them …"

"What did you just say?" hissed Achmed angry. His hand twitched in Homers direction, as if he wanted to strike the old man, but he didn't.

"She is not going to suffocate on you to be sure!"

Homer took the insult silently. He didn't believe that the Nagornaya was able to hear them or that she was now angry at them. At least not at this distance …

Superstition! Nothing but superstition! It was impossible to count all the idols of the underground – you always stepped one of them on the foot. Homer didn't think about them anymore. Achmed on the other hand thought differently.

Achmed took a rosary made out of empty makarov cartridges out of his jackets pocket and started to slide the lead idols through his dirty fingers. At the same time his lips moved silently in his own language, he probably asked Nagornaya for forgiveness for Homers sins.

Hunter had felt something with his supernatural senses. He gave them a signal with his hands, slowed down and got to his knees.

"There is fog" mumbled Hunter and breathed in the cold air with his nose. "What is there?"

Homer and Achmed looked at each other. Both knew what that meant: It was open season. Now they needed a lot of luck get to the northern border of the Nagornaya alive.

"How am I supposed to explain that to you?" answered Achmed unwillingly.

"It is the breath …"

"Whose breath?" asked Hunter unimpressed and put his bag on the ground so that he could choose the right weapon for this job.

Achmed whispered:"The breath of the Nagornaya"

"We'll see" said Homer contemptuously and made a grimace. It seemed like Hunters distorted face came back to life; in reality it was motionless as always – only the light fell differently on his face.

They could see it now too, a few hundred meters further than Hunter: A thick, pale white fog crawled at them on the ground, danced around their feet, crawled up their legs and then filled the tunnel up to their waist … it seemed like they were climbing into an ice-cold and hostile ocean. They stepped deeper and deeper over an oblique ground, until the murky water would finally go over their heads.

You couldn't see anything anymore. The beams of their flashlights got stuck in the fog like flies in a net of a spider. After they had finally fought themselves through the emptiness they felt exhausted and defeated. Noise, like dimmed by a pillow, came through the fog. Every move cost them a lot of strength, as if they didn't walk on concrete but on thick mud.

Breathing became harder, not because of the humidity, but because of the bidder stench of the air. They had to overcome themselves to breathe in the air and they couldn't shake the feeling that in reality they were breathing in the breath of a giant, strange creature that withdrew oxygen from the air and replaced with its toxic fumes.

Homer put on his gasmask, just in case. Hunter gave him a quick look, reached into his bag and put on his generic rubber mask as well. Only Achmed was once again without a gasmask.

The brigadier stopped and listened with his shredded ear at the Nagornaya, but the thick white soup hindered him to decipher the noises from the station and create a picture of the situation. It sounded like something heavy had fallen to the ground far away, followed by a long sigh, in a pitch that was too low for a human, yes even for every other creature. Then they heard something scrapping hysterically and shrieking like if a giant hand bent the thick iron pipes on the ceiling to a knot.

Hunter twitched his head, as if he was trying to shake of dirt from his head and instead of a short machine pistol he was now using an army-Kalashnikov with a double magazine and a mounted grenade-launcher. "Finally" he said.

At first they didn't realize that they had already entered the station; the fog in the Nagornaya was as thick as milk. While Homer looked through the glass of his gasmask he felt like a diver that was on board of a sunken ocean cruiser.

You could only see the mosaic through the fog for a few seconds at a time and then it swallowed them again: It were seagulls that had been pressed with coarse soviet metal templates. Fossils, thought Homer, the fate of humanity and their creations … but will somebody dig us up one day?

The fog around them was alive, floated in different directions, twitching. Sometimes dark images emerged from the fog, a dented wagon of a train and a rusty cabin, a scaly body or head of mythological creature. Homer shuddered while thinking who had filled the seats all these decades.

He had heard much about what was going on at the Nagornaya, but he had never seen anything face to face …

"There it is, to the right!" screamed Achmed and ripped on the old man's sleeve. Out of his self-made suppressor sounded a silent shot.

Homer turned around with such speed, nobody would have thought he still had it in his rheumatic body, but his blurred beam of light illuminated only a part of the metal covered pillars.

"Behind! Behind us!" Achmed shot another salve. But his bullets only shredded the rest of the marble plates that once decorated the walls of the station. Whatever he had seen through the blurry dim lights had already vanished, seemingly unharmed.

He must have breathed in too much of that stuff, thought Homer. But one second later he saw something in the edge of his field of vision … something gigantic, crouching because the four meter high ceiling of the station was too low for its size and it was unimaginable maneuverable. For an instance it emerged out of the fog, became visible again and disappeared, a long time before the old man was able to point his assault-rifle at it.

Homer looked at around desperately for the brigadier.

He couldn't see him anywhere.

"It is ok. Don't be afraid" he said again and again. He tried to catch his breath and calm her down. "You know … there are people that are far worse off than we are …" He tried to smile, but he only made a terrible grimace, as if his lower jaw had fallen off.

Sasha smiled back, over her pointed, dirty cheek a salty tear crawled down. At least her father was conscious again, after a few hours, enough for her to think about everything.

"This time I couldn't find anything" he croaked.

"Forgive me. At the end I even went to the garages as well. It was further than I thought. But I found an intact one there. The lock was out of rust free steel, even oiled. Breaking it was impossible, so I used the last demolition charge. I thought, maybe there is a car in there, spare parts and all. I let it explode, went in: Empty. Why did they look it then the bastards? All that noise, I prayed that nobody had heard me. But when I got out of the garage there were all these dogs. I thought, that's it … That's it". He closed his eyes and went silent.

Sasha took his hand worried, but he shook his head imperceptible without opening his eyes: Don't be afraid, everything is fine. He didn't even have the strength to talk anymore but he wanted tell her everything, why he had returned with empty hands, why they now had to starve for a week until he could get up again.

But before he was able to do so he fell into a deep sleep.

Sasha checked the bandages on his shredded leg, wet with black blood and laid a fresh compress on it. She stood up and went to the cage with the rat and opened the small door.

The animal looked out of its cage distrustful, seemed like it tried to hide at first and then it did Sasha the favor and jumped on the train track and ran around. You can rely on the feelings of a rat: There was no danger in the tunnel. Calmer, the young women returned to the stretcher.

"Of course you will feel better again. You will be able to walk again" she whispered to her father. "And you will find a garage with a new car in it. We'll get in together and drive away from here. Ten maybe fifteen stations away. Somewhere, where they don't know us, where we are strangers. Where nobody hates us. If there is even such a place …"

Now it was her that told the magical stories that she had heard so many times from him. She repeated it word by word and now that she spoke out the old mantra of her father she believed in it even a hundredth times more. She would nurture him back to health, heal him. Somewhere in this world there had to be a place where they didn't matter to others.

A place where they could be happy

"There it is! It is looking at me!"

Achmed shrieked as if it had already grabbed him. He had never screamed like that. Again he fired his assault-rifle until it jammed. There was nothing left from Achmed's serenity: Trembling he tried to reload a new clip.

"It is after me … after me …"

Suddenly you could hear the rattling sound of another automatic rifle. It stayed silent for a second and went off again, this time almost inaudible with salves of three shots. So Hunter was still alive, there was still hope.

The slamming sound distanced itself and came back again, so it was impossible to say if the bullets found their target.

Homer was expecting the angry screams of an injured monster, but the station covered itself in mysterious silence; its inhabitants seemed to have no bodies or they were inviolable.

The brigadier continued his strange fight at the other end of the station, from time to time the glowing tracer rounds cut through the fog, drunken from the fight against the ghost of Nagornaya he had left his companions alone.

Homer took a deep breath and put back his head. For some time now he had the need, he had felt the cold, heavy look with his skin, his head, his hair and his back. Now he couldn't oppose his premonitions anymore.

Directly under the ceiling, far above their heads, a big head floated in the fog, so big that Homer didn't realize at what he was looking at in the beginning. The rest of the giant body remained in the darkness of the station. Its huge face was hanging above the tiny humans that tried to defend themselves with their useless weapons. It wasn't in a hurry – it just gave them a bit of time before it attacked.

Silent with terror Homer sank to his knees. His rifle fell out of his hands and hit the floor with a rattling sound. Achmed screamed as he was being tortured. Without haste the creature approached and filled the entire room in front of them with its dark body, giant as a mountain. Homer closed his eyes, prepared himself, said farewell. Only one thing went through his mind, a regretful, bidder thought drilling into his conciseness: He hadn't made it …

Hunter's grenade launcher spit out a flame, the shockwave numbed their ears; it left a continuously thin humming sound while burning parts of shredded flesh was raining down on them.

Achmed was the first to snap out of it, helped Homer to his feet and dragged him with him.

They ran, stumbled over the tracks, got back up again without feeling any pain. They held on to each other, because in the milky soup you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. They ran as if they were threatened not just with death, but with something even more terrible: Utter, final, unchangeable embodiment of absolute, physical and mental destruction.

Invisible and almost inaudible, but only a step behind them, the demons followed, accompanying them but not attacking. They seemed to toy with them by giving them the illusion of a possible rescue.

Then the two men saw the fragmented marble walls and after that segments of the tunnels. They had made it out of the Nagornaya! The guardians of the station fell back like they were chained to the station. But it was too early to stand still.

Achmed ran ahead, searched with his hands for the pipes on the wall and pushed Homer in front of him, who stumbled and wanted to sit down several times.

"What's with the brigadier?" croaked Homer after he had ripped off the sticky gasmask from his face while he was walking.

"As soon as we pass the fog we'll stop and wait. It got to be soon, maybe 200 steps … Out of the fog. Everything but to get out of the fog" repeated Achmed, mysterious, "I'll count the steps …"

But neither after 200 steps nor after 300 did the fog seemed to disappear. What if it had spread to the Nagatinskaya? What if had swallowed the Tulskaya and the Nachimovski as well?

"That can't be … it has to … only a bit …" Mumbled Achmed for the hundredth time and stopped immediately.

Homer bumped into him and both fell to the ground.

"The wall has ended" Achmed stepped over the tracks and the wet concrete floor as if he thought that the ground would vanish as quick under his feet.

"There she is, what do you mean?" Homer had felt the oblique tunnel segment and hold on to it and stood up carefully.

"Sorry" Achmed replied silently. "You know back at the station … I thought I would never leave it. How it looked at me … Me, do you understand? It had decided to take me. I thought I would stay there forever. You don't even get a real burial" he spoke slowly to keep himself from crying.

He tried to justify the way he was speaking, even thought he didn't have too.

Homer shook his head. "It's alright; I shat my pants as well. It doesn't matter. Let's go, it can't be far now"

The hunt was over, they could breathe again and even if it wasn't they couldn't run anymore. So they kept walking slowly, feeling their way along the wall half blind with their hands. Step by step to salvation. The worst part was behind them and even though the fog hadn't disappeared soon the air from the tunnel would rip it apart and carry it away through the vents. Soon they would get to humanity and wait for their officer.

It happened earlier than they thought. Did space and time get bent in the fog as well?

An iron staircase crawled up the wall; the round tunnel became a square one and next to the tracks you could see the indent in the track that had saved a lot of lives.

"Look!" whispered Homer, "It looks like a station. A station!"

"Hey! Is there someone?" screamed Achmed as loud as he could.

"Brothers, is there somebody?" he fell into a pointless, triumphal laugh.

The dim light of the lamps revealed what the darkness had hidden, walls of marble, that hadn't been left untouched by man and time. It seemed that none of the colorful mosaics, which had been the pride of the Nagatinskaya had survived.

And what had happened to the marble around the pillars? That can't be …

Even though Achmed didn't get an answer he kept screaming and laughing: Of course they had been afraid of the fog and had run through it like crazy, but they no longer cared about that anymore.

Homer on the other hand was worried and searched the wall with the weaker becoming beam of his flashlight. His suspicions let him cold running down his back.

Finally he found them: The iron letters screwed on the burst marble.

NAGORNAYA.

You never returned to the same place coincidentally.

Her father had always said that. You return to change something, to apologize for something. Sometimes god grabs us and brings us back to the place where he forgot us last. God does that to make a decision or to give us a second chance.

Her father explained that to her; he would never be able to return to his home station. He had no more strength to get revenge, to fight or to proof something. He no longer wanted forgiveness.

It was an old story that had almost cost him his life. But he was certain that everybody had gotten what they deserved.

Now they lived in eternal exile, because Sasha's father had nothing to make up and god didn't show up at this station.

The plan for their rescue, to find a new car on the surface that hadn't rotted, to repair it, get enough gas and to break out of this vicious cycle that fate had drawn, had become a good night story a long time ago.

For Sasha there was another way to the big metro.

When she put the half repaired machines, old jewelry or decayed books for food and bullets on the tracks on certain days, it happened that the merchants offered a lot more.

They illuminated her thin, young stature with the lights of their railcar, winked at each other, tried to talk to her and promised a lot of things. The girl looked wild. Silent and distrusting she looked at them, ready to strike with knife behind her back. Her jacket was big but didn't hide her stature. Dirt and machine oil in her face made her blue eyes glow brighter. So bright that some couldn't look at them.

Blond hair, cut unevenly with the knife she was holding, didn't even go over her ears. Her lips never smiled.

The men on the rail cart knew that they couldn't tame this wolf with riches, so they tried it with freedom. She never answered them. That's why they thought she couldn't talk, what made it even easier.

But Sasha knew one thing: Whatever she did she wouldn't be able to buy two seats on the rail cart.

Her father had a history with this people that she could never change.

How they were standing in front of her, faceless with their black gas masks, they looked more like enemies for her.

She didn't find anything on them of which she would have dreamt, not even while she was sleeping.

So she put the telephones, irons, and tee cookers on the tracks, steeped 10 steps back and waited till the merchants had gathered the goods.

Then they threw a few packets of dried pork and threw a handful of bullets on the tracks, only so that they could watch them crawling around to pick all up. Than the rail cart left slowly and vanished back to the real world.

Sasha turned around and went back home where a mountain of broken machines, a screw driver, a blowtorch and to a dynamo machine repurposed bicycle were waiting for her. She sat herself on the saddle, closed her eyes and rode far, far away. She almost forgot that she wasn't moving. And the fact that she had refused the easy way out gave her even more strength.

What the devil? Why did we end up here again? Like in a fever, Homer tried to find an explanation for what had happened here.

Suddenly Achmed turned silent; he had seen where Homer had shined his lamp. "It's not letting me go …" he whispered silently, almost without any sound.

The fog around them became thicker and thicker, they could almost no longer see each other. Without humans the Nagornaya had been asleep, now she awoke again. To new life: The heavy air reacted to their words with almost unnoticeable fluctuations and vague shadows moved in the deep.

No trace of Hunter … a being of flesh and blood couldn't win the fight against these phantoms; as soon as the station had played enough with them she would swallow them as a whole.

"Go" said Achmed. "It wants me. You can't know it. You haven't been here as much as I have"

"Stop it!" yelled Homer, surprised by the volume of his voice. "We got lost in the fog. Let's go back"

"We can't go back. You can run as much as you want, you will return to this place again and again if you stay with me. You will get through on your own. Go, I beg you"

"Enough!" Homer grabbed Achmeds hand and dragged him behind him to the tunnel. "In an hour you will thank me!"

"Tell my wife …"

An unbelievable powerful force ripped Achmeds hand out of Homer's grip, up into the fog, into the void.

He wasn't even able to scream, he just vanished, as if from one second to the other he had been atomized and stopped to exist.

Homer screamed, turned around and shot his precious bullets, one clip after another.

Suddenly he felt a blow to his back, so strong that it had to have been one of these demons and the universe imploded.


	5. Chapter 5

Memories (Chapter 5)

Sasha ran to the window and opened it. Fresh air and soft light fell into the room. The window was hanging over an abyss full of soft morning fog. With the first rays of the sun it would disappear and they would be able to see fir covered hills instead of the abyss, green meadows behind them and the matchbox tall buildings and onion formed bell towers.

The early morning was their time. She felt the approaching dawn and stood up half an hour earlier to get on top of the mountains in time. Behind the small, simple, but clean and warm hut a rocky path went up the hill, surrounded by bright yellow flowers and it could happen that Sasha slipped several times on her way up and hurt her knee.

In thoughts she wiped the windowsill that was still wet from the breath of the night with her sleeve. She had dreamt about something dark, disastrous that had crossed her happy life, but the rests of this restless vision disappeared immediately when the cold wind started to blow over her skin. Now she no longer wanted to think about what had bothered her in her dream. She had to hurry to get to the mountain top in time to greet the sun and then sliding down the path, returning to the hut, to make breakfast, wake her father and pack his provisions.

Then Sasha would be by herself for the whole day while her father was hunting. She would hunt the slow dragonflies and flying roaches between the flowers that were as yellow as the linkrusta-wallpapers in the trains.

On her toes she crept over the creaking planks, opened the door a bit and laughed silently.

It had been several years since Sasha's father had last seen a happy smile on his daughters face. He didn't want to wake her. His leg was swollen, numb and it didn't stop bleeding. It was said that the bite of a stray dog never healed …

Should he call her? But he hadn't been at home for 24 hours. Because before he had left for the garages he had entered an apartment complex, that they called a "termite hill", located two blocks from the station, he climbed to the 15th floor and passed out for some time. All that time Sasha probably hadn't closed an eye – his daughter never slept while he was away … she deserved the rest. They all lie. Nothing is going to happen to me.

He really would have liked to know what she dreamt about. He couldn't even relax in his dreams. Only rarely his consciousness let him revisit his sorrow less youth; normally in his dreams he wandered between the familiar dead houses with their empty inners and a good dream was when found an untouched apartment, full of miraculously preserved machines and books.

Every time he fell asleep he hoped to dream about the past. That time when he had just met Sasha's mother. When he with only twenty, had become the commander of the garrison of the station. Back then the inhabitants thought of the metro as a provisional home and not of the collective barracks for the forced labor under the surface, where they sat out a life sentence.

Instead he always ended up in the close past, with the events that happened five years ago. That day that had determined his fate and even worse the fate of his daughter …

Once again he stood there, at the head of his fighters. He held his Kalashnikov so it was ready to fire, with his officers makarov he could have only put a bullet into his head. Apart from his two dozen military police marksmen there wasn't a single human left in the station that was still loyal to him.

The mob raged, swelled in size and shook the barricade with dozens of hands. The first chaotic voices had transformed themselves into a rhythmic choir controlled by an invisible director. They still demanded that he stepped down but soon they would demand his head.

This was no spontaneous demonstration. This was the work of provocateurs. He could have tried to identify and liquidate every single one of them, but now it was already too late. When he wanted to stop the rebellion and remain in power there was only one thing left to do: To open fire on the group. It wasn't too late for that …

His fingers bracketed around an invisible stock, under his swollen eye lids his pupils twitched restless from one side to the other, his lips moved and formed silent orders. The black puddle he laid in was getting bigger with every minute. And the bigger it got the more life had left him.

"Where are they?"

Something ripped Homer out of the dark see of unconsciousness. He shook himself like a fish on a hook, he gasped cramped for air and starred at the brigadier with an insane look. The dark, zyclopic colossus still towered over him, the guardians of the Nagornaya, and reached with their long fingers after him; without any struggle they would rip out his legs or crush his ribs. They appeared behind of Homers closed eyes and only disappeared slowly, even unwillingly, when he opened his eyes again.

He tried to jump up again but the stranger's hand that had hold his shoulder with a light grip now hold him like the iron hook that had pulled him out of his nightmares again.

He started to breath normally again and concentrated himself on the scared with machine oil covered face with the shiny eyes … Hunter, he was still alive?

Homer carefully turned his head to the left, than to the right: Where they still in the cursed station?

No, this was an empty and clean tunnel. You could almost no longer see the fog of the Nagornaya that had covered the exits anywhere. Hunter must have carried him over a kilometer. Reassured Homer broke down. He asked him again, just to be sure: "Where are they?"

"Nobody is here. You are safe"

"These creatures … did they knock me unconscious?"

He wondered and held the back of his head.

"No that was me. I had to knock you down, otherwise I wouldn't have been able get you out of there in your panic. You could have hurt me"

Finally Hunter loosened his iron grip, stood up stiffly and moved his hand to his officer's belt where the Stetschkin hang. On the other side hang a leather box and Homer didn't know what its function was. The brigadier opened it and took out a flat messing bottle. He shook it, opened it and took a deep sip without asking Homer if wanted one to. How he had closed his eyes for a second, it run down cold Homer's back:

His left eye hadn't fully closed.

"Where's Achmed? What happened to him? Homer remembered and he felt cold.

"He's dead" his answer almost sounded indifferent.

"Dead" Homer echoed mechanically.

The moment the giant hand ripped the hand of his comrade out of his he knew: No living being could escape its grip. Homer had just been lucky that the Nagornaya hadn't chosen him. The old man turned around again. He still couldn't believe that Achmed was gone forever. He stared at his hand, it was scraped and bloody. He hadn't been able to hold on to him. He didn't have the strength.

"He knew that he would die" he said silently.

"Why did they take him out of all of us and not me?"

"There was still life in him" answered the Brigadier.

"They feed on human life"

Homer shook his head. "That isn't fair. He had small children. So many things that hold him here … well held him here … but I have been looking for those for eternity …"

"Would you eat moss?" Hunter cut off Homer and ended the conversation with him pulling Homer back on his feet. "We got to keep moving. We're late"

While Homer ran behind Hunter he tried to figure out why he and Achmed had ended up at the Nagornaya. Like a flesh eating orchid the station had clouded their mind with its miasma and lured them back in. But they hadn't turn around a single time that much was sure for Homer. So he started to believe in the distortion of space in the tunnels now, like those simple minded comrades of his on guard duty. The solution was a lot easier. He stopped and slapped himself on the forehead: The connecting track! Some hundred meters behind the Nagornaya there was a track for trains to turn around. It turned around at a sharp angle and that's why they following the wall blindly, reached the parallel track and then when the wall suddenly disappeared, ran back to the station.

So much for magic! But there was still another thing that needed an explanation. "Wait!" he yelled after Hunter.

But he just continued to march forward as if he was deaf, so the old man had to catch up to him while breathing heavily. When he had caught up to the Brigadier he tried to look him into the eyes and said: "Why did you leave us to our fate?"

"Me you two?"

There was a sarcastic tone in his emotionless, metallic voice. Homer bit himself on his tongue. True, it was him and Achemd that had ran from the station and left the Brigadier alone with the demons …

The more Homer thought about how raging and helplessly Hunter had fought at the Nagornaya the more he realized that the inhabitants of the station hadn't accepted the fight that Hunter had tried to force them into. Out of fear? Or had they seen him as a part of the family?

Homer gathered his courage – there was only one question left, the hardest one of all. "At the Nagornaya … Why did they ignore you?"

Several minutes passed; Homer didn't dare to ask again. Then Hunter gave him a short, almost inaudible and grumpy answer: "Would you eat tainted flesh?"

The beauty of the world will redeem you. Her father had once said jokingly.

Sasha had put the colorful teabag back in the pocket of her jacket with a red face. The small quadratic plastic hull that still had a faint aroma of green tea was her greatest treasure. And a reminder that the universe wasn't just the body of the station and its four tunnels buried twenty meters below the graveyard that had once been Moscow. The teabag was some kind of magical portal that moved Sasha back by centuries and thousands of kilometers. It was so much more, something enormously important.

In the wet climate of the metro paper decayed quickly.

Decay and mold didn't just eat books and brochures, they destroyed their entire past. Without pictures and chronicles the already limping human mind stumbled and ran into the wrong direction like man without his crutches.

The hull of the teabag was out of a material that mold and the time couldn't harm. Sasha's father had once said that it would take thousands of years before this material would fall apart. So even their decedents would one day inherit this teabag, she thought.

It was, even though it was a miniature, a real picture. A golden frame that was as bright as on the day it came from the conveyor belt surrounded a view that robbed Sasha of her breath. Steep walls of stone, covered in dreamlike mist, a far reaching pine forest that held on the almost vertical mountains, roaring waterfalls that fell down from the highest tip of the mountain into an abyss, a purple shine that spoke of the nearing dawn … in her entire life she had never seen anything more beautiful.

She could sit there for a long time, with the teabag in her hand and just look at it. The mist in the morning that covered the mountains held her view magically. And even though she had read all the books that her father had brought from his expeditions before they sold them, the read words did not suffice to describe what she felt looked at these one centimeter tall mountains and breathing in the smell of the pine needles. It was a world so far from their reality but it had a strong pull …

The sweet longing and the eternal expectation of what the sun would see first … the endless thoughts about what was behind the sign with the brand of the tea: A strange tree? A nest of an eagle? One of those houses that hold on the slope and in which she would live with her father?

It was him that had brought her the teabag when she was five years old. Back then with content it was a real rarity.

He had wanted to surprise her with real tea and she had to gather all her courage to drink it like medicine.

But the plastic hull had fascinated her from the very start. Back then he had explained her that it wasn't a very artful illustration: A conventional Chinese province, just good enough for the print of a teabag. But teen years later Sasha still viewed it with the same eyes as on the day she had gotten the gift from her father.

Her father on the other hand thought that the teabag was just a shabby replacement for the whole world. And every time she fell into this trance and looked at this badly drawn fantasy he felt the unspoken accusation for their mutilated, bloodless life. He tried to hold her back every time, without any success. With almost anger he asked her for the hundredth time what she liked about this old packaging for a gram of tea. For the hundredth time she put it back into her pocket and answered embarrassed:"Father … I think it is beautiful!"

If Hunter hadn't been there he hadn't stopped for a second but Homer would have taken three times as long for the way. He would have never moved so secure and self-confident through the tunnel. For the transit through the Nagornaya the group had paid a terrible price, but at least two out of three had made it. And all three could have survived if they wouldn't have been lost in the fog. The price wasn't higher than usual: Nothing had happened there that hadn't happened before, neither at the Nachimovski prospect nor at the Nagornaya.

So it wasn't because of the tunnels that lead to the Tuskaya? Now they were completely silent, but it was a disastrous and tense silence. Sure: Even at a totally unknown station Hunter could feel dangers that waited for them hundredths of meters in advance. But was it possible that his intuition would leave him exactly here, here were at least a dozen experienced fighters had suffered the same fate?

Approaching the Nagatinskaya he hoped he would have the solution for all the secrets … Homer struggled to keep his thoughts together because they ran to fast.

Still, he tried to think about what waited for them at the station that he had once loved so much. The myth gatherer imagined that the legendary satanic legation had emerged at the Nagatinskaya or that the inhabitants had been eaten by migrating rats on their way for food through the tunnels that humans couldn't pass through. Even if Homer would have been alone he wouldn't have turned around for anything in the world. In all these years at the Sevastopolskaya he had forgotten to fear death. When he had embarked on this journey he knew that it could be his last journey; and he was ready to sacrifice his remaining time for it.

A mere half an hour after the encounter with the monsters of the Nagornaya they had become the horrors of his memories.

Even more, while he listened to his thoughts, he felt faint movement in the deeps of his soul: Somewhere deep down inside him something had been created or awaken, the thing that he had wanted so much. That what he had searched for on his dangerous adventures, that what he had never been able to find at home …

Now he had a real reason to delay death with all his power. He would allow it after his work was done.

The last war had been more brutal than all that had come before it and it had only taken a few days. Since the Second World War three generations had passed, the last veterans had died and the living didn't fear war anymore. The collective insanity that had robbed millions of humans of their humanity had once again become a simple political instrument.

The fatal game had become more like routine with every day that had passed and in the end there was no more time to make the right decision. The ban of using atomic weapons was dropped under the table in the heat of the fight:

In the first act of the drama they had hung their rifle on the wall and in the one before the last they had actually fired it. It didn't matter who had pulled the trigger first anymore.

All big cities on the earth were turned into ash and rubble at the same time. Even the few that had an anti-rocket shield were destroyed; they remained intact from the outside but radiation, chemical and biological weapons killed the majority of the population instantly. The unstable radio transmission between the few survivors ended after a few years. From that moment the world had ended for the inhabitants of the metro and neighboring lines.

While before the earth had been explored and colonized now it had returned to the borderless ocean of chaos and oblivion of ancient times. The small islands of civilization sank into the depths one after another, without oil or power humanity returned to the Stone Age.

An age of terror began.

For centuries scientist have tried to return history from its almost destroyed papyri, parchments and foliants. With the invention of the press newspapers have continued to weave the fabric of history. And then the chronics of the last centuries almost no longer had any gaps in it: Almost every gesture, every move of those who controlled the world had been carefully documented.

No the presses of the world had been destroyed with a single blow, or they had been abandoned. The looms of history stood still. In a world without a future they were no longer needed. The shreds of this fabric were only held together by a single, thin thread.

In the first years after the disaster Nikolai Ivanowitsch had tried to find his family in the overcrowded stations. It had been in vain. He had abandoned all hope already but alone and lost as he was he now stumbled through the darkness of the underground because in this kind of afterlife he didn't know what to do with himself. The thread of Arianne – the sense of life – that could have showed him the exit out of this never ending maze had fallen out of his hand.

In his longing for the past he had began to collect the newspapers, to remember and to dream.

He searched the articles and reports to find out if they could have prevented the apocalypse. One day he started to write down the events in his station in some kind of article.

And so it happened that Nikolai Ivanowitsch had found a new thread: He decided to become chronicler of the metro, author of the youngest history, from the end of the world to his own. His disorganized, aimless collection had now a purpose: To restore the damaged fabric of time and continue to weave it further.

The others saw Nikolai Ivanowitsch's passion for harmless nonsense. Out of his own will he sacrificed his pay for old newspapers and turned every corner of his personal space into an archive. He volunteered for guard duty, because there at the fire at meter 300 wild men told themselves the craziest stories like little boys, where he caught every granule of truth about the rest of the metro. Out of the myriad of rumors he filtered out the facts and wrote them down in his books.

Even though this work distracted him he knew how useless it was. After his death all these reports would turn do dust without any care. The day he wouldn't return home they were only good to make fire anymore.

From the yellowed paper only smoke and ash would remain, the atoms would enter new connections and forms, to be short: You couldn't destroy the material. But what he really tried to preserve would, all that unimaginable, ethereal that was on these pages would be lost forever.

Humans worked that way: What stood in the school books remained in their heads up to graduation. And when they forgot the learned afterwards they did it with a true sense of relief. The memories of men were like the sand of the desert. Numbers, dates and names of unimportant people disappeared in it without a trace, as if you would have thrown a stick into a wandering dune.

Something only remains if it conquers the fantasy of man, makes the heart beat faster, to move them, make them feel something. A gripping story of a hero or a great love could survive an entire civilization because it remains in the brain and is told by generation to generation.

When he had realized that he transformed himself from a wannabe scientist to an alchemist – and out of Nikolai Ivanowitsch became Homer.

And from now on he no longer spent his nights to create some chronics but to search for the formula for immortality. For a story as long living as Gilgamesh and a hero that was tough as Odysseus. On the thread of this story he would attach all his accumulated knowledge. And in a world where paper was transformed into warmth, where you carelessly sacrificed the past for a small moment in the here and now this legend of this hero would storm the hearts of the people and redeem them from their collective amnesty.

But the sought after formula let him wait, the hero just didn't want to step onto the stage. The copying of the newspaper articles hadn't taught Homer how to create myths, to breathe life into this golem and make this made up story more interesting than reality. His worktable seemed like Frankenstein's laboratory to him: Crumpled pages with fragments of the first chapters of his saga, which characters weren't convincing, weren't able to survive. The only things that he got from these nightly seating were dark rings under his eyes and a sore bitten lip.

And Homer still didn't give up on his new destiny that easy. He chased away every suspicion that it could be that he wasn't suited for it, that you needed a skill to create worlds that he hadn't received.

He just had to wait for an inspiration, he said to himself … and from where should it come from? From the humid air in the station maybe? The tea ritual at his home or during his shift doing agriculture? Or while on guard duty, which became and more scarce for him because of his age? No, he needed excitement, adventure and the storm of passion. Maybe then the dams of his mind would break and he could start his creation …

Even in the hardest times the Nagatinskaya had never been abandoned completely. Of course it wasn't an ideal place to life. Nothing grew here and the exits were closed. But many used the station to slip under the radar for a while or for some intimate time with their lover.

But now the station was empty.

Hunter moved with silent steps up the stairs, up to the tracks and then he stopped. Homer followed him, breathing heavily and looked around nervously at all sides. The station was dark, only the dust hanging in air glittered in the shine of their lamps. The sparse hills of shredded cardboard on which the inhabitants of the Nagatinskaya slept on were spread out all over the floor. Homer leaned his back against a pillar and sledded down slowly to the ground. The Nagatinskaya had once been one of his favorite stations because of the elegant and colorful marble mosaics. Now the station was dark and lifeless. The Nagatinskaya was nothing like he remembered.

Like the picture of a dead man on his tomb, from an old picture from his passport at a time where he didn't know that he wasn't just looking into a camera but eternity.

"Not a single soul is here" said Homer hesitantly and confused.

"Except one" said Hunter and nodded into Homers direction.

"I meant …" started Homer but Hunter cut him off with a gesture of his hand

At the end of the station where the row of pillars ended and even the brigadier's search light couldn't shine, something crawled slowly onto the platform …

Homer fell onto the ground next to him, lightened his fall with his arms and stood up clumsily. Hunters lamp was turned off and the brigadier himself had disappeared into thin air. Sweating because of his fear, Homer switched his rifle to auto-fire and pressed the stock shivering against his shoulder.

Out of the distance he heart two suppressed shots.

Encouraged he looked past the pillar and hasted forward. In the middle of the platform Hunter was standing upright. At his feet was lying a difficult to see, skinny and pitiful figure. It seemed to be made out of boxes and rags and only had a slight remembrance to a human being. But it was one. You couldn't determine its age or sex – in its dirty face you could only see its eyes. It made almost inaudible, sighing sounds and tried to crawl away from the brigadier. He seemed to have shot through both of its legs.

"Where is everyone?" Why is nobody here?" Hunter put his foot on the stinking bundle of torn rags that the homeless person was wearing.

"They are all gone … left me alone. Left me all by myself" it croaked. At the same time its hand wiped over the granite without moving forwards.

"Where did they go?"

"To the Tulskaya …"

Homer had reached both of them and joined the conversation immediately: "What is going on there?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

The homeless person made a grimace. "Everybody that went there, died there. Go and ask them. I had no more strength to move around in those tunnels. I'd rather die here"

The brigadier didn't give up: "Why did they leave?"

"They were afraid, boss. The station got more and emptier over time. So they decided to break through. Nobody returned"

"Not a single one?" Hunter raised his pistol.

"Nobody. Only one" the man corrected himself. When he realized that the barrel of the gun was still pointed at him he floundered around like an ant under a magnifying glass.

"He went to the Nagornaya. I was asleep. I could have imagined it"

"When?"

The homeless man shook his head. "I don't have a watch. Maybe yesterday, maybe last week"

No more questions came but the barrel of the pistol was still pointed at the forehead of the interrogated man.

Hunter was silent. Strange, but he was breathing heavily; you could have thought that the conversation with the bum had cost him a lot of strength.

"Can I …" asked the homeless man.

"There, eat!" growled the brigadier and before Homer knew what was going he had pulled the trigger twice. The dark blood coming from the hole in the unlucky man's forehead shoot over his wide open eyes. He fell to the ground – once again nothing but rags and cardboard. Without looking up Hunter loaded four more bullets into the clip of the Stetschkin (a silence pistol with almost no recoil) and jumped on the tracks. "We will find out for ourselves soon enough" he yelled at the old man.

Homer lowered himself unwillingly over the body, took a piece cloth and put it over the destroyed head of the homeless man. His hands hadn't stopped shaking.

"Why did you kill him?" he asked weakly.

"Ask yourself" answered Hunter in a dull voice.

Even when he gathered all his strength the only thing he could still do was open and close his eyes. Strange that he had awoken at all … he had been laying there unconscious for about an hour and his body had felt as numb as if it was covered with a layer of ice. His tongue had dried at his palate and a ton heavy weight laid on his chest. No he couldn't even say goodbye to his daughter, it would have been the only thing worth delaying the end of his eternal fight for survival.

Sasha didn't smile anymore. It seemed she was now dreaming uneasy, laid rolled up on her camp bet, both arms crossed in front of her chest. Even when she was a child he had always woken her when she had been tormented by nightmares, but now he had only enough strength to slowly movie his eyelids.

And then even that became harder and harder. When he wanted hold on till Sasha awoke he would have to continue the fight. It lasted for over twenty years now, every day, every minute and he was damned tired of it. Tired of fighting, hiding, hunting, proving, hoping and lying.

While his mind darkened he only had two wishes: To see Sasha's eyes one more time and then … to finally find peace. But he couldn't do it. Once again the pictures of the past rose up in front of his inner eye and mixed with reality.

He had to make a decision. To break others or be broken himself. To punish or to penance …

The guardsmen closed the rows. Every single one of them was loyal to him alone. Ready to die here and now, to let themselves be torn apart by the masses or to shot at innocent. He was the commander of the last unbreakable station of the metro, president of a no longer existing confederation. Under his soldiers his authority was unquestioned, unmistaken, every single of his orders was to be executed immediately, without question. He would take full responsibility for it, like he had always done.

When he retreated now this station would sink into anarchy at first and then it would be swallowed by the boiling red empire that had swelled over its usual borders and had annexed more and more territories. When he would open fire on the demonstrators, power would remain in his hands – at least for some time. And if he wouldn't shy away from mass executions and torture maybe even forever.

He aimed his rifle. One moment after him the entire unit did so too.

There they raged, not just a few hundredth demonstrators but a giant, faceless human mass: Bared fangs, wide open eyes, raised fists.

He unsecured his rifle. His unit answered with the same clicking sound.

It was time take fate into his own hands.

He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. Chalk fell from the ceiling. For a moment the masses turned silent. He signaled his fighters to lower their weapons and made on step towards the demonstrators. He had made his decision.

And finally the memory let him in peace.

Sasha was still sleeping. He took his last breath, tried to look at her one last time but he could no longer raise his eyelids … but instead of eternal, impenetrable darkness he saw an unimaginable blue sky – clear and bright, like the eyes of his daughter.

"Stop!"

Homer would have almost jumped and raised his hands, he was that surprised. But he kept it together. The voice – probably from a megaphone – out of the depths of the tunnel had surprised him. The brigadier wasn't surprised at all. Tense as a cobra before it strikes; he took the heavy automatic rifle from his back almost unnoticeable.

Hunter hadn't just refused to answer a single of the old man's questions but hadn't said a word. The one and a half kilometer from the Nagatinskaya to the Tulskaya had felt as endless as the journey to Golgatha. He feared that death waited at the end of the tunnel and it was getting harder for him to keep Hunters speed.

At least he had time to prepare himself and to think about old times. He thought about Yelena, cursed himself for his egoism and asked her to forgive him. He once saw the magical, soft, sad light on that slightly rainy summer day on the Tverskaya. He regretted that he hadn't said what should happen to his newspapers before he left.

He had been ready to die – to be ripped apart by monsters, eaten by giant rats, poisoned by some kind of gas … what other explanation was there why the Tulskaya had transformed itself into a black hole that swallowed everything outside and didn't let it go?

But when he heard the mysterious but familiar human voice I didn't know what to think anymore. Had the Tulskaya just been captured? But who was able to destroy all the recon teams of the Sevastopolskaya, vagabonds that traveled through the tunnels systematically, not even sparing women and old people?

"Thirty steps forward!" said the voice out of the distance.

It sounded vaguely familiar and if he would have had time to think about it he would have been able to determine who's it was.

Wasn't that someone from the Sevastopolskaya?

Hunter put his Kalashnikov in one hand and carefully counted his steps: For the thirty Homer needed fifty. In front of them was a fuzzy barricade that had been constructed out of random objects. Strangely the defenders didn't use any light …

"Lamps out!" commanded somebody from behind the pile. "One of you, come twenty steps closer"

Hunter unsecured his rifle and moved forwards.

Homer remained behind alone again; he didn't dare to refuse the orders. In the deep darkness that reigned here now, he carefully sat down on the ground, reached for the wall and leaned at it.

The steps of the brigadier went silent at the wanted distance. Somebody asked him something inaudible and he gave a growling answer. Then the situation got tense: Instead of the first neutral mood now you could hear curses and insults. It seemed that Hunter demanded something that the invisible guardians denied him.

Now they almost screamed at each other and Homer could almost make out single words … but he could make out one word: "Punishment!"

In this moment the sound of a Kalashnikov ended the conversation and a heavy salve from a Petscheng (a heavy machine gun) answered. Homer threw himself to the ground, unsecured his rifle but didn't fire, he didn't knew if he should shot or not, or at whom.

But it was over before it started; Homer hadn't even time to aim his rifle.

In the small brakes between the machine gun salves that almost sounded like Morse signals, the stomach of the tunnel made a long shrieking sound that Homer wouldn't have mistaken for anything else.

The hermetic doors where closing! Tons of steel slammed against each other, it muzzled the screams and the machine gun salves.

The only entrance to the metro was closed.

Now there was no more hope for the Sevastopolskaya.


	6. Chapter 6

From the other side (chapter 6)

One moment after that Homer almost believed that he had imagined everything: The vague outline of the barricades at the end of the tunnel, the somehow familiar distorted voice … when the light went out all other sounds faded as well. He felt like a convict that had been put a sack over his face just before the execution. In the absolute darkness and sudden silence the whole world seemed to have disappeared. Homer touched his face to reassure himself that he hadn't vanished into this cosmic blackness as well. Then he calmed down again, tried to find his lamp and held the trembling beam of light in front of him where a few seconds ago the invisible battle had taken place. About thirty meters from where he had taken cover during the fight, the tunnel ended. A steel door cut through the tunnel like the blade of a guillotine. So he had heard right: Somebody had really activated the hermetic door. Homer knew of its existence but he hadn't thought that it was still functional. But it turned out that you could still use it. His from paperwork weakened eyes didn't immediately see the human figure that leaned on the iron wall. Homer pointed his rifle forward and took a step back. At first he thought that one of the men from the other side had remained outside in the confusion, but then he recognized Hunter.

The brigadier didn't move. Homer started to sweat.

Hesitantly he approached Hunter. Probably he would see blood on the wall … but no. Even though they had fired at Hunter in an empty tunnel with a machine gun he was completely unharmed. He pressed his mutilated ear on the metal and listened for sounds that only he could hear.

"What happened?" Homer asked carefully and got closer.

The brigadier didn't pay any attention to him. He whispered something to himself, repeating the words that were spoken on the other side of the closed door. Several minutes passed till he moved away from the door and turned to Homer: "We go back"

"What happened?"

"There are bandits. We need reinforcements"

"Bandits?" asked the old man confused. "That voice back there seemed …"

"The entire Tulskaya is in the hand of the enemy. We will have to storm it. For that we need backup with flamethrowers"

"Why flamethrowers?" Homer was beside himself.

"To be sure. We go back" Hunter turned around and moved away from Homer.

Before Homer followed Hunter he looked at the door observantly, yes he even pressed his own ear against the cold metal in the hope to hear a part of the conversation as well. But he heard only silence.

And suddenly Homer realized that he didn't believe Hunter. Whoever this enemy was that had captured the station behaved completely incomprehensible. Why did they activate the hermetic door? To protect themselves from two people? Which bandits negotiated with some armed men instead of mowing them down before they even got to them?

And then: What meant the word "punishment" that the mysterious guardian had mentioned?

Nothing was more valuable than a human life, Sasha's father had once said.

For him it weren't just empty words, not just a saying. There had been a time where he thought differently, he hadn't been youngest military commander in the whole line for nothing.

With twenty you don't think much about murder and death. Your whole life seems like a game and in the worst case scenario you just start over again. It wasn't a coincidence that the armies of the world recruited young men that had been students before. And those boys that played war were only blue and red arrows for only one man that commanded thousands. One that didn't think about ripped off legs, guts swelling out and crushed skulls when he decided to sacrifice a regiment.

There had been a time where her father had hated his enemies as much as himself. Back then he had looked at tasks that put him in danger with strange frivolity. But he had never foolishly moved forward but with strict calculations. Smart, striving and indifferent for his life he couldn't feel reality, didn't waste a thought about the consequences and felt no regrets. He had never shot at women and children but he had executed deserters with his own hands and was always the first to storm the enemies fortifications. Pain couldn't harm him. Most of the time he didn't care.

Until he met Sasha's mother.

She defeated him, him who was used to winning with her indifference. His only weakness, his ambition that had driven him against machineguns before was now directed at a desperate storm attack that always transformed itself into a long siege.

For a long time he didn't have to strain himself when it was about women. They had always come to him. Corrupted by their compliance he had always satisfied his longings at the first night so that the seduced had lost every interest for him before he could fall in love with her. His stormy nature and his fame clouded the girl's eyes and none tried the good old strategy of letting the man wait so that they could get to know him better.

He couldn't impress Sasha's mother with his awards, his rank and his triumphs on the real battlefield and on the battlefield of love as well. She didn't react to his looks and his jokes only made her shake her head. To storm this young woman would be a challenge. A challenge more important than the conquest of the neighboring station.

She should have been only another mark on the stock of his rifle. But soon he understood: The further the unity with her faded into the distance, the more important she became to him. Being with her about one hour per day felt like a triumph for him. But it seemed that she only agreed to it to torment him. She doubted his service, laughed about his principles, cursed his coldness and shook his conscience until he was at the end of his strength.

He endured everything. He even liked it. With her he started to think. To question. And then to feel: Helplessness, when he didn't know how to approach her, regret for all the minutes he couldn't spend near her, yes even fear to lose what he had never won. Love. Then she rewarded him with a sign:

A silver ring.

Only when he no longer knew how to live on without her she gave in.

One year later Sasha was born.

He could never abandon these two lives and he himself couldn't just die anymore.

When you command the strongest army in your known part of the world with the age of twenty-five it is very hard to get rid of the notion that the earth would stop turning because you commanded it to do so. But to take the life of a human you didn't really need much power, to bring somebody back to life wasn't in the hands of anyone one though.

He knew that too well: Tuberculoses killed his wife and he wasn't able rescue her. In that moment something in him broke.

Sasha had just turned four but could still remember her mother very good. Sasha remembered the horrible emptiness of the tunnels after she died. The close death of her mother had opened a bottomless abyss in her small world and she had looked straight into it. The edges of the abyss only grew back slowly – two or three years passed until she no longer yelled for her mother in her sleep.

Her father did that to this day.

Maybe Homer didn't approach the whole thing right. When the hero of his epos didn't want to appear then why shouldn't he start with his lover? Maybe he could get him out of hiding with her beauty and youth?

When Homer started to draw her outline first, would his hero just step forward out of nowhere? For their love to be complete those two figures had to complement each other ideally and completely. Therefore the hero of Homers poem had to appear as a completed, finished character.

In their thoughts and facets of their character they would match each other like the shards of the glass mosaics at the Novoslobodskaya. Then when they were once whole, they would be determined to become one again … Homer didn't find anything bad in "stealing" that plot from the old classics.

It was easier said than done. To form a young woman out of ink and paper was a task that Homer didn't think he was able to accomplish. He doubted that he was able to describe feelings convincingly as well.

His relationship with Yelena was one of softness; he had learnt to late how to love without holding back. In their age it was no longer about satisfying their passion but to come together and leave the shadows of their pasts behind them and ease their loneliness.

Nikolai Ivanovitsch's had left his one and only true love he up there. But the facets of her personality had faded over the centuries so that there was no example for his novel anymore. Also there had been nothing heroic about his relationship with his wife.

On the day the atomic thunderstorm broke over Moscow, they had offered Nikolai to take the place of the train driver Serov who had retired shortly before. That meant twice the pay. Before he would take on the new post he was to take a few days off. He had called his wife and she had said that she would bake a Scharlottka, then leave the house to buy sect and take a stroll with their kids.

But before he could go on vacation he just had to bring another shift behind him. When Nikolai Ivanovitsch entered the driver cabin of the train he knew that he would be its new captain, happily married, at the beginning of a tunnel that lead to a beautiful and bright future. Half an hour later he had aged twenty years. When he came to the end of the lane, Nikolai was a broken, poor and lonely man. Maybe that was why every time he stumbled onto a miraculously preserved train he felt the strange need to take the place of the train driver, letting his hands glide over the instruments on the dashboard, to look through the front windshield into the network of tunnels. To imagine starting the vehicle again …

And put it in reverse …

It was like the brigadier created some kind of field that shielded them from all dangers. And he seemed to know it.

They didn't even need an hour back to the Nagornaya.

This time the line didn't resist them.

Homer had felt it again: Scout, merchant from the Sevastopolskaya or any other human, as soon as they ventured into the tunnels they became foreign matter for the blood flow of the metro. As soon as they left their station the air around them went up in flames, reality got cracks and unbelievable creatures emerged seemingly out of nowhere and threw themselves against the humans of the metro.

Hunter on the other hand was no stranger to the dark tunnels and it didn't seem to bother the leviathan in which veins they moved. He even turned off his light to transform himself into the darkness that filled the tunnels. Then it seemed that he was gripped by an invisible stream and flew on twice as fast. Even though Homer followed him with all his strength he fell behind and had to yell so that Hunter would wait on the old man.

On their way back they passed the Nagornaya without being disturbed. The fog had disappeared and the station slept.

Now you could see from one end of the station to the other. Where the ghostly giants hid themselves was a riddle that Homer was unable to solve. It was a common, abandoned stop: Salt had gathered itself on the wet ceiling, a soft layer of dust was on the platform; here and there somebody had written something indecent on the walls with charcoal and the walls were blackened from smoke. Only on your second look you could see the strange markings on the ground, doing some kind of strange dance through the station and the dried brown stains on the pillars and the ceiling which were cracked and broken as if something had scratched itself on them.

But even the Nagornaya just flickered shortly and then was left behind. They flew on. As long as Homer followed the brigadier his magical cocoon of invincibility seemed to surround him as well. The old man started to wonder, where did he take the strength for this enormous march?

But he didn't have enough air to talk and Hunter probably wouldn't have answered. For the hundredth time Homer asked himself why he had joined the silent and merciless brigadier that seemed to forget about him again and again.

The numbing smell of the Nachimovski prospect approached. Homer would have liked to leave this station behind him as quickly as possible but the brigadier slowed down. While the old man was only able to stand the smell through his gasmask Hunter even sniffed around as if he could smell something out of the thick and heavy rotten air.

Again the corpse eaters retreated away from them out of respect, threw away their half gnawed on bones and spit out shreds of flesh onto the ground. Hunter climbed the mountain in the middle of the station, sinking into the rotting body parts up to his ankles and he was looking around for quite some time. It didn't find what he was looking for and satisfied he made a gesture with his hand into Homers direction and continued to march on.

Homer on the other hand had found something. He had tripped and fallen to the ground; scaring away a young corpse eater that was just disemboweled a wet bulletproof vest.

Homer saw a helmet from the Sevastopolskaya that had rolled to the side. One moment after that the glass of his gasmask steamed up – he was covered in cold sweat.

He desperately tried to fight his nausea, crawled to the bones and started to fish for the dog tags. Instead he found a small, dark-red smudged notebook. The first page he opened was the last one of the entries: "Do not storm the station, under any circumstances!"

Even when she was just a child her father had taught her not to cry but now she had nothing which she could throw against fate anymore. Tears flowed over her face automatically and out of her chest you could hear a thin, painful whining. She had realized immediately what had happened and now she had been trying for hours to deal with it.

Did he yell for her to help him? Had he wanted to tell her something important? She no longer remembered when exactly she had fallen asleep and she didn't know if she was awake now. Maybe there was a world where her father was alive. Where she hadn't killed him with her sleep, her weakness and egoism. Sasha held the cold but still soft hand of her fathers to warm it and talked to herself:" You're going to find a car. We will go up there, sit inside and drive away. You will laugh again like on the day you brought the recorder with the music CD's …"

Her father had sat upright at first, leaning on the pillar and his chin pressed to his chest so that you could have thought that he was sleeping. But then his body had slipped down into the puddle of blood. Like if he had been tired of playing alive, no longer wanting to put on a show to her.

The wrinkles that ran through her father's face had smoothened.

She let go of his hand, helped him to sit more comfortable and covered him from head to toe in a torn blanket.

There was no way to bury him. Of course she could have left him on the surface where he could see the sky when it brightened one day. But long before that his body would have become the victim of the creatures.

In their station nobody would touch him. Out of the lost southern tunnels was no danger to be feared, the only creatures that lived there where flying roaches. In the north the tunnel ended into a rusted, half broken metro bridge. Past the bridge humans lived but they would have never thought about crossing the bridge just out of curiosity. Everybody knew that there was nothing on the other side but burned wasteland. And on the edge of this wasteland there was a guard station where two castaways sat out their death sentence.

Her father would have never allowed her to stay here on her own and now it was completely pointless. Also Sasha knew: It didn't matter how far she ran, id didn't matter how desperately she tried to escape, she would never be able to free herself from this cursed dungeon. Not anymore.

"Papa … Forgive me" she sobbed. There was nothing there anymore with which she could have earned his forgiveness.

She pulled the silver ring from his finger and dropped into the pocket of her overall. Then she took the cage with the rat that was still uneasy and walked slowly to the north. Her boots left bloody prints on the granite.

She had already stepped onto the rails and entered the tunnel when suddenly; in the empty station, something astonishing happened. A long flame reached at the body of her father.

But it didn't reach him and retreated unwillingly back into the deep darkness, as if it respected his right for his last rest. (In this moment Sasha's part of the book is ahead of this chapter, this happens after Homer and Hunter leave again – chapter 7)

"They are coming back! They are coming back!" it sounded out of the loudspeaker.

Istomin put down the receiver from his ear and looked at him unbelievingly.

"Who's they?" Denis Michailovitsch jumped up from his chair and spilled his tea. A dark stain spread on his pants. He cursed the tea and repeated his question.

"Who's they?" asked Istomin again mechanically.

"The brigadier and Homer, Achmed is dead" it sounded out of the receiver through the static.

Vladimir Ivanovitsch wiped the sweat of his forehead with a handkerchief and scratched himself under the black rubber of his pirate-like eye patch. Whenever a fighter died it was his responsibility to inform their families.

Without letting himself be connected again he put his head out of the door and yelled for the adjutant: "Both of them to me, immediately! And I want the table ready!"

He went into his office, straightened the pictures on the wall for some reason, stopped at the map of the metro, whispered something to himself and then turned to Denis Michailovitsch. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and had a broad smile on his face.

"Wolodya, you act like a girl before her rendezvous" the colonel said grinning.

"And you aren't nervous at all?"

Answered the leader of the station and pointed with his head at the colonels wet trousers.

"Me? I am ready. The two strike teams are ready. Just another day and we can go"

Dennis moved his finger over the blue beret, stood up and put it on his head. He looked more official that way.

They heard hasty steps from the hallway; the adjutant looked at them asking while holding a dim glass bottle with something alcoholic in it through the almost closed door.

Istomin made a gesture with his hands: Later, Later!

Then they finally could hear the familiar, dump voice, the door sprang open and a broad figure entered. Behind the brigadiers back was the old storyteller that Hunter had carried around for some reason.

"I welcome you!" Istomin sat into his seat, stood up and sat back down.

"Now, what is it?" asked the colonel. The brigadier looked from one man to the other and turned to Istomin.

"The Tulskaya has been captured by a wandering group of bandits. They have killed everyone"

Dennis Michailovitsch raised his bushy eyebrows. "Our men too?

"As far as I can tell. We only got to the stations door. There it came to a fight and then they closed the

hermetic door"

"The hermetic door?" Istomin held on to the edge of the table and stood up.

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"Storm the station" both the brigadier and the colonel answered completely synchronized.

"No we can't storm the station"

It was Homers voice that sound out of the background.

She just had to wait for the right hour. If she hadn't confused the days the railcar would soon emerge from the wet mist of the night. Every other minute she remained in this place, this abyss, there were the tunnel emerged from the earth like an open vein would one day cost her life. But there was nothing to do but to wait. On the other side of this never ending bridge she would find a closed hermetic door that you could only open from the other side and that once a week on market day.

Today Sasha had nothing to offer, but this time she had to buy more than ever before. She didn't care what the people on the railcar would want in return for her to pass into the world of the living – the grave coldness and the lifeless lack of emotion of her father had passed to her.

How often had she dreamt to one day get to into another station, to be surrounded by other people, establish friendships and to meet someone special …

She had asked her father about his youth, not just to go back to her bright lit childhood, but because instead of her mother she saw herself and instead of her father she saw the blurry picture of a beautiful young man in her own naïve imagination of love. She doubted that she would be able to get along with other people if one day she would be able to go back to the metro. About what would these people would talk about?

But now, mere hours before the arrival of the ferry, yes maybe even minutes, the other men and women didn't matter to hear. Even the thought about an existence worthy of a human being felt like she was betraying her father. Without hesitating one second she would have agreed to spend the rest of her days in this station, if that would have been able to save him.

When the candle stump in the glass started to fight its last fight she put the fire on a new wick. On one of his expeditions her father had found a whole chest full of wax candles and she always carried one of them in her overall's pocket. Sasha enjoyed imagining that their bodies were exactly like the candles and that a part of her father had passed to her when he faded.

If the people on the railcar would recognize her signal through the mist?

Until now she had only looked outside from time to time to remain outside as less as possible. Her father had prohibited her from doing so and his swollen head was warning enough for her. On the slope Sasha always felt uneasy, like a trapped mole, looking around restless and only dared to venture to the beginning of the bridge to watch down into the black river. But now she had too much time. Leaning forward and trembling in the wet and cold wind Sasha made a few steps forward. Through the dawn and boney trees she saw the fallen skyscrapers; in the oily, thick waters of the rivers something massive swam around and in the distance she heard an inhuman scream. Suddenly a familiar sound emerged, the familiar squeaking sound of the railcar.

Sasha jumped up, holding the glass with the candle up high and from the bridge a small ray of light answered.

The old railcar approached, struggling against the thick fog. The weak shine of the spotlight cut through the night and Sasha made one step back. It wasn't the same railcar as normal. It moved slowly, like every rotation of the wheels cost the people pushing the levers a lot of strength.

Finally it stopped ten feet in front of Sasha. A fat giant in a primitive radiation suit jumped off the railcar and landed on the gravel. The diabolically dancing fire of her candle was being reflected by the glass of his gasmask so that Sasha couldn't see his eyes. With one hand he held an army Kalashnikov with a wooden stock.

"I want to get away from here" explained Sasha and raised her head.

"A-way" echoed the scarecrow and stretched the sound surprised and sarcastic at the same time. "And what do you offer in return?"

"I have nothing anymore". She withstood his look and looked directly into the glasses of the gasmask.

"There is always something to take. Especially with women"

The ferryman groaned, than he went silent. "You would leave your father alone here?"

"I have nothing anymore" she repeated and looked to the ground.

"So he did die" it sounded parts relieved parts disappointed out of the mask.

"Better this way. He wouldn't have liked this right here"

The barrel of the gun slowly unzipped her overall.

"Stop it!" she screamed and took a step back.

The glass with the candle fell onto the rail, shards flew around and darkness took over.

"Don't you get it? Nobody returns from here" the scarecrow looked at her indifferent out of the dark dead glasses. "Your body isn't even enough to pay for the trip, but it may just pay for your father's debt"

The assault rifle swirled in his hands so that the stock of the gun pointed forward. Sasha felt a heavy blow to her forehead. Her consciousness showed pity and left her.

Since the Nachimovski prospect Hunter hadn't left Homer out of his sight, so that he hadn't been able to take a closer look into the notebook. Suddenly the brigadier cared, even tried to not just to not let him fall behind any further but he had matched Homer speed. For that he had to slow down a lot. Several times he had stopped and turned around checking if somebody was following them. But the blinding light of his lamp was always pointed at Homer face so that the old man felt like he was being interrogated.

He cursed, blinked and tried to remain calm. The penetrating look of the brigadier moved over his entire body, searching for the item he had found at the Nachimovski prospect. Nonsense! Of course Hunter couldn't have seen anything, in that moment he had been too far away. He had probably felt the change in Homers behavior. But every suspecting something. But every time their looks met he started to sweat. The few things that he had been able to read had made him question the brigadier's intentions.

It was diary. Parts of the pages were glued together by dried blood. Homer left those alone, his tired and numb fingers would have just ripped them apart. The entries on the first pages were confusing, as if the author no longer knew which letters meant what and his thoughts ran all over the place so that you almost couldn't follow them.

"Passed the Nagornaya without casualties" revealed the notebook and jumped on immediately: "Chaos at the Tulskaya. No way to the metro. Hanza isn't letting anybody through. We can't go back as well"

Homer continued to read. Out of his field of vision he saw the brigadier stepping down from the kurgan and approaching him. He couldn't let the diary fall into the brigadiers hands. Before he let the notebook disappear in his backpack he read: "Have the situation under control. The station is sealed and we have a new commander" and then "Who dies next?"

And then over the question was the date. The yellowed pages of the notebook made him believe that what had happened in it had happened in the last century, but the entry was only a couple of days old.

Homers old brain put together the single pieces of this mosaic with almost forgotten speed: The mysterious wanderer, the pitiful homeless man at the Nagatinskaya, the seemingly familiar voice of the guard at the door and the sentence: "We can't go back as well". In front of his inner eye he had put it together to one picture. Maybe the pages that were stuck together had all the answers to the mysterious events?

At least one thing was sure; there had been no attack on the Tulskaya. What had happened there was far more complex and mysterious. And Hunter that had questions the guards fifteen minutes ago knew that as well as Homer.

That was why he couldn't show the notebook to Hunter.

And that was why he had risked disagreeing with him in Istomins office.

"No we can't storm the station" he repeated. Hunter slowly turned his head, like a battleship that readied its main cannon. Istomin pushed back his chair and came out from behind the table after all.

The colonel made a tired grimace.

"We can't blow up the door" Homer continued, "Because there is the groundwater, we would flood the entire line. The Tulskaya is just barely holding it back, every day they hope that the ground water doesn't break through. And you know that for ten years now the parallel tunnel has been …"

"Are we supposed to knock and wait till they open up?" the colonel interrupted.

"We can still go around" said Istomin.

The colonel was so surprised that he started to cough. Then he argued with Istomin, accused him of wanting to make his best man into cripples, yes to even bring them into their graves. But then the brigadier interrupted them.

"The Tulskaya has to be cleaned. This situation demands the total destruction of all that are there. Not one of your people is still there. They are all dead. If you want to prevent any more casualties this is the only way. I have all the necessary information"

His last words were definitely aimed at Homer.

The old man felt like a small dog that had been shook so it would stop barking.

Istomin straightened his jacket: "If the way is blocked from the other side there is only one way to get to the Tulskaya. From the other side. From Hanza. But that also means that we can't send armed men. That is out of the question"

Hunter made a reassuring gesture with his hand: "I'll find some"

The colonel winced.

"But if you want to get to Hanza by going around you have to cross two stations over the Kaschovkaya line to the Kaschirskaya" said Istomin and went silent.

The brigadier crossed his arms in front of his chest: "And?"

"There's very high radiation in the area near the Kaschirskaya. A fragment of a warhead went down not far from there. There was no detonation but the radiation is still dangerously high. One out of two that gets a dose of radiation like that dies in about a month. Even now"

The group went silent. Homer used the break to make an unnoticed, tactical retreat out of Istomins office.

Then Vladimir Ivanovitsch came to word again. It seemed that he feared that the uncontrollable brigadier would still try to blow up the hermetic door at the Tulskaya and said: "We have radiation suits. Two of them. You can take one of our best fighters with you. We'll wait". He looked at the colonel. "What can we do otherwise?"

Dennis Michailovitsch sighed. "Let's go to the boys. We'll talk about it and you can choose a companion"

"Not necessary" Hunter shook his head.

"I need Homer"


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 (limits)

The railcar drove over the wide bright yellow stripe that ran over the ground and the ceiling. The man that controlled it could no longer act like he didn't hear the faster and faster getting clicking sound of the Geiger counter. He reached for the brake and mumbled excusing: "Colonel sir, … Without any protection we can't proceed …"

"Just another hundredth meters" asked Denis Michailovitsch. "Because of the high exposure you'll get a week off. For us it is just a two minute drive but the two in the suits would take half an hour for it"

"This here is the limit" grumbled the helmsman but he didn't dare to slow down.

"Stop" ordered Hunter. "We continue on foot. The radiation is really too high"

The brakes squealed, the search light attached on the vehicles frame started to shake back and forth and the railcar came to a stop. The brigadier and Homer who had let their feet hang over the edge of the railcar jumped onto the rails. In their heavy suits made out off led soaked material they looked like cosmonauts.

These suits were unimaginable expensive and rare; in the entire metro there were maybe a few dozen of them.

At the Sevastopolskaya they had almost never been used – they had saved them for more important missions.

They withstood the highest level radiation but even small movement was an arduous matter. At least for Homer.

Denis Michailovitsch left the railcar behind him and walked with them for another few minutes. He and Hunter exchanged a few sentences – intentionally fragmented that Homer wouldn't be able to decipher them.

"Where are you going to get them?" asked the colonel the brigadier grumpy.

"They're going to give me some. They can't do anything else" answered the other hollow.

"Nobody is waiting for you. For them you died. Dead, you understand?"

Hunter stood still for a moment and spoke silently, more to himself than to the officer: "If it would be that simple"

"To desert from the order is worse than death" growled Denis Michailovitsch.

The brigadier made a surly gesture with his hand, like if he saluted the colonel but at the same time cut an invisible rope that was attached to an anchor. Denis Michailovitsch understood the gesture and remained at the pier, while the other two distanced themselves from the shore, slowly but steadily continuing their journey over this oceans of darkness.

The colonel took his hand from his forehead and gave the helmsman of the railcar the signal to start the motor.

He felt empty: There was nobody that he could give an ultimatum anymore, nobody against he could fight anymore.

As the commander of the military of his lonely island in the sea he could now only hope that the small expedition wouldn't sink, but to one day return from the other side, as proof that the earth was still round.

The last guard post in the tunnel had been directly behind the Kachovskaya, which every human soul had abandoned. As long as Homer could remember the inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya had never been attacked from the east.

The yellow line seemed to not only separate two parts of the metro but to connect two planets with each other which were hundredths of light-years away from each other. Beyond this line the living area of the earth had almost unnoticeable changed into a dead moon landscape, and both were strangely similar. While Homer concentrated himself to not trip over his many kilos heavy boots he heard how his breath squeezed itself through the complex system of tubes and filters and he imagined that he was an astronaut that somebody had abandoned on the far reaches of a far away planet. He allowed his childish fantasy because it was easier to deal with the suit that way, because on this moon there was more gravity and he with the thought that for many kilometers they would be the only living beings.

Neither scientist, nor science fiction writer had been able to foresee this future, thought the old man. In the year 2034 mankind would have already conquered half of the galaxy, or at least the neighboring sun systems, they had promised Homer that when he was young. But the authors of science fiction novels and the scientist had always believed that humanity would act rational and consequent. As if it wasn't made off a few milliards of slow, careless and enjoyment seeking individuals, but some kind of bee hive with collective reason and a focused will. As if they had ever had the intentions to conquer space. Instead they had been become bored with the game and had abandoned their goal halfway and turned to electronics at first then to biotechnology without getting any halfway impressing results in those areas. Maybe in nuclear physics.

And now he was here, a flightless astronaut, surviving only because of this space suit, a stranger to his own planet.

Ready to conquer the tunnel between the Kachovskaya Nad and the Kaschirskaya. He could forget about all others and the survivors. He could no longer see the stars anyway.

Strange: Here past the yellow line his body moaned under gravity but his heart was weightless. Days before the march to the Tulskaya, when he had said goodbye to Yelena he had known that he had to return. But when hunter had chosen him as his companion for the second time he knew:

This time it was serious. So he had prayed for a challenge, an enlightenment and he had finally been heard. To be too afraid would have been dumb and unworthy. He knew that he wouldn't be able to do his life's work as side job. But fate didn't let itself be stopped. A motto said that it will come, maybe later, one last time … There would probably be no last time, and when he didn't decide now for would should he still live? Should he spent the time that he still had as Nikolai Ivanovitsch, the fool of the station, an old, slobbering and stupid smiling story teller?

But to transform himself from a caricature of the real Homer to his inheritor, to transform himself from a lover of the old myths to their creator, to raise from the ashes as a new human he first had to burn his old image. He believed that when he continued to doubt to give in to his longing for home and wife, continuously looking back at the past he would overlooks something very important that been laying in front of him in the end. He had to cut that all from him. From this new expedition he would if at all not return unharmed. Of course he was sorry for Yelena. At first she didn't believe that Homer had returned alive and healthy after one day. She had tried to keep him from embarking on this voyage, in vain.

When they parted ways in tears again he didn't promise anything anymore. He pressed her against him and watched over her shoulder at clock. It was time to go. He knew that. He couldn't amputate ten years of his live so easily and he would probably get phantom pains from doing so.

He had believed that he would have wanted to look back all the time. But as soon as he crossed the yellow strip it was if he had actually died and his souls had freed himself from the both heavy and unmoving wraps and ascended. He was free.

The suit didn't seem to slow hunter down. The clothing had transformed his muscular, wolf like figure into a formless mountain but it hadn't limited his movement. He walked alongside the heavy breathing homer but only because he hadn't left him out of his line of sight since the Nachimovski prospect.

After all he had seen ant the Nagatinskaya, the Nagornaya and the Tulaskaya it hadn't been easy for Homer to agree on another journey with Hunter. But there was something that had convinced him. The brigadier presence had started his long awaited metamorphoses that promised his reincarnation. The old man didn't care why Hunter carried him around again, let it be as a guide or walking provision.

The main thing was to not let this moment pass, to use it as long as it lasted, to imagine something, to write down something.

And then when Hunter had called for Homer he had felt that also wanted something of him. It wasn't because he showed him the way in the tunnels or protected him from all possible dangers. Maybe the brigadier took something from the old man without asking for it while he gave him what he wanted?

But what would he need?

Hunter's lack of emotions could no longer deceive Homer. Behind the crust of the paralyzed face magma cooked, and it shot over the crater of his eternally open eyes from time to time. He was uneasy. He was looking for something as well.

Hunter seemed to be perfect for the role of Homers epic hero in his book. At first the old man had hesitated but after a few tries he had acknowledged him. Even if many characteristics of the brigadier, his passion for killing, his silence and sparse gestures had made Homer careful. Hunter was like those murders that gave the police cryptic messages so they could be caught. Homer didn't know if the brigadier saw a priest waiting for a confession, a biographer or some kind of donor of something in Homer, but he felt that this attachment mutual. And that it would soon become stronger than his fear.

Actually Homer didn't shake the feeling that Hunter was delaying a really important conversation. From time to time the brigadier looked at him as if he wanted to ask something but he remained silent. But maybe the old man had confused a wish with reality again and he wasn't an unnecessary witness that Hunter would choke somewhere in the tunnel.

More frequently the brigadiers gaze fell on the old man's backpack where the mysterious diary was. He seemed to feel that Homers thoughts circled around a certain object and he closed in it, approaching slowly but steady. Cramped Homer tried not to think about the diary, in vain.

He hadn't had much time to pack and had only spent a few minutes with the diary. Of course it hadn't been enough to wet all with blood glued together pages and separate them from each other but he had been able to read a part of the pages. They were all over the place, the writing was in fragments and events weren't in order, as if the author had had to stopped for words and only written them down with much peril in some places. So that they would make sense Homer had to bring them in the right order.

"No contact. The telephone is silent. Probably sabotage. Someone who had been exiled? Out of revenge?

Still in front of us"

"The situation is without a way out. No help can be expected from anywhere. To ask the Sevastopolskaya would be the end for our men. We can only wait … But for how long?"

"We cannot get out … They went crazy. If not them then who? Flee!"

And then there was something else. Immediately after the last words that warned about storming the Tulskaya there was a signature, almost unreadable, stamped with the brown weal of a bloody finger. Homer had heard the name before, he had even said it.

This diary belonged to the radio operator that had left with the caravan for the Tulskaya a week ago.

They passed the tunnel to another metro depot that hadn't been emptied out. Without a doubt it would have if it hadn't been hit by so much radiation. The black tunnel that leads there had been barricaded with welded together metal of all kinds. On a metal sign which hang down from a piece of wire that was attached to one of the bars, a dull smiling skull stared at them and under it were remains of a warning in red paint. That had now fallen off or been removed intentionally.

This barred of tunnel held homers look magically and when he was finally able to take his gaze from it he was thinking that this line wasn't as lifeless as many thought at the Sevastopolskaya.

Then they passed the Warschavskaya, a horrible rusted and with fungus covered station that looked like a body that laid to long in water. The with tiles covered walls sweated some kind of murky fluid and through the half opened hermetic door a cold wind blew from the surface as if a giant creature tried to breathe air into this rotten station. The hysterical ticking sound of the Geiger counter exhorted them to leave this place as fast as possible.

They were already approaching the Kaschirskaya when the system stopped working and the indicator stopped at the end of the scale. Homer felt a bitter smell on his tongue.

"Where did it go down?' asked Hunter.

The voice of the brigadier was hard to hear as if Homer had put his head into a full bathtub. He stopped, finally he had an excuse for a just short but welcome pause and pointed with his glove to the southeast. "At the Kantemirovskaya. We think that the ceiling and the airshaft went down with it. Nobody knows for certain"

"That means the Kantemirowvskaya is abandoned?

"Always has been. Past the Kolomenskaya you won't find a single human soul"

"Somebody once told me …" started Hunter but then he went silent, made gesture for Homer to be silent as well.

He seemed to feel some kind of invisible wave. Finally he asked:"Does anybody know what happened at the Kaschirskaya?"

"How?" Homer didn't know if his sarcastic tone sounded though the filters.

"Then I am going to tell you. The radiation is so high there that we will be cooked in a matter of minutes. With the radiation suit or without. We are going back"

"Back? To the Sevastopolskaya?"

"Yes, there I will go to the surface. Maybe I get there from there" said Hunter sunken in thoughts. It was as if he was already planning his route.

Homer couldn't find the right words: "You want to go alone?"

"I can't always look after you. I have to watch out that I won't die too. We won't get through together anyway. It isn't even sure that I am going to make it alone"

"Don't you understand? I have to go with you, I want …"

Homer desperately searched for a reason, an excuse.

"… to do something useful before you die?" ended the brigadier the sentence. His tone was indifferent, even though Homer knew that the filter of the gasmasks filtered any fumes stayed out so that only tasteless sterile air came in and mechanical soulless voices as well.

The old man closed his eyes and tried desperately to remember what he knew about the short stub of the Kachochskaya line, about the irradiated Samoskvorezkaya line, about the way from the Sevastopolskaya to the Serpuchovskaya … Everything but not to turn back, to not return to this lacking life that had nothing to offer to him anymore but false hopes of great stories and legends.

"Follow me!" he croaked and suddenly walked to the east with such speed that even he was surprised. They walked east, to the Kaschirskaya, into the middle of hell.

She dreamt that she was working with a saw on the iron ring to which she was chained to the wall, the tool shrieked and slipped again and again but every time she had gotten one millimeter into the steel the thin scratch grew together again in front of her eyes.

But Sasha didn't give up. Again she took the saw with her bloody hands and continued to work the unyielding metal.

The most important thing was to continue, to show no weakness, not to stop working and to not rest.

Her chained feet were swollen and numb. Sasha knew that even if she succeeded to beat the iron she wouldn't be able to flee because she could no longer control her legs …

She awoke and opened her eyelids.

The chains hadn't been a dream. Sasha's hands were handcuffed. She was lying on the dirty loading area of the mining railcar that shrieked monotone while it tortured itself forward. In her mouth was a dirty piece of cloth and her forehead hurt and bleed.

He didn't kill me, she thought. Why?

From the loading area she could only see a part of the tunnels ceiling. In the randomly moving light the welds of the tunnel rings flickered out of the darkness. Suddenly the tunnel segments disappeared and cracked white paint was to see.

What kind of station was this?

This was a bad place: Not just silent but deathly silent, not just empty of people but empty of live and also dark. She had always thought that the station on the other side of the bridge would be full of people and noise. Should she have been mistaken?

The blanket over Sasha didn't move anymore. The kidnapper climbed on the platform cursing, his with iron spikes fitted soles made a strange sound. He seemed to scan his surroundings. He had already taken of his gasmask because suddenly you could hear him mumble: "There you are. It has been a while" relieved he breathed out and beat after something – no kicked against something lifeless, heavy: A full sack?"

Sasha realized. She bit the stinking rag and started to moan dump, her body cramped. Now she knew where the fat man in the radiation suit had brought her and to whom his words were pointed at.

Even the thought to leave Hunter behind was absurd.

With a few predator like jumps he had caught up to him, held on to his shoulder and shook him painfully.

"What's going with you?"

"A little further …" Croaked the old man. "I remember.

There is still a tunnel that leads directly to the

Samoskvorezkaya line, even before the Kaschirskaya.

If we pass there we get directly into the tunnel and don't have to run through the station. We circle it and end up directly at the Kolomenskaya. It can't be far. Please …"

Homer used Hunters hesitation to rip himself free, but one of his legs got caught up in the suit and didn't move, he fell onto the rails. But stood up immediately after that and continued to set one foot in front of the other. Hunter grabbed the old man with ease as if he was a rat, turn him to his face so that the windows of their gasmasks where at the same height. A few seconds he locked at Homer, but then he eased his grip. "Ok" he growled

From now on Homer dragged the brigadier behind him without stopping for a second. The sound of his blood in his ears sounded over the clicking sound of the Geiger counter, his stiff legs were almost no longer under his control and his lungs seemed to explode, struggling to get air.

He had almost overlooked the deep dark stain of the hole. They squeezed through and ran for another few minutes until they left through another new tunnel. The brigadier looked around hastily, went back into the tunnel and asked the old man angry: "Where have you lead me? Have you even been here before?"

Around another thirty meters to left, into the direction that they had to go, the tunnel had been filled from the floor to the ceiling by something that vaguely reminded him of the web of a spider. Homer didn't have enough air to breathe so the just shook his head. It was the whole truth, he had never been here. Everything else he had heard about this place he wouldn't tell hunter.

The brigadier held the assault rifle in his left hand, pulled a long straight knife out of his backpack; it was some kind of self-made machete and started to slice the sticky white mass. The dried shells of flying roaches that hung in the web started to shiver and made sounds like rusted bells. The edges of the wound started to grow back together immediately.

The brigadier raised the half transparent piece of spider web, put his search light through and lit the side tunnel.

They would need hours to cut their way through. The sticky web had grown in the tunnel in many layers.

Hunter looked at the Geiger counter, made a strange but disappointed noise and started to ripped through the web that was between the walls. The web only gave in reluctantly,

It cost them more time then they had. In around ten minutes they had only gotten around thirty feet and the net became denser and denser, it seemed to block the entry like a big piece of cotton. When they finally passed a overgrown vent where an ugly two headed skeleton laid on the ground the brigadier threw his knife to the ground.

They hung in this web like the roaches and even if the creature that had made this giant web was already dead the radiation would do its job.

While Hunter was looking for an exit Homer suddenly remembered what he had heard about this place. He dropped to his knees, shook a few bullets out of his reserve clip, turned them around, opened them with his knife and shook the gunpowder in to his hand.

Hunter realized immediately. A few moments later they stood at the entrance of the side tunnel again, covered a piece of cotton with the coarse grey powder and held a lighter to it.

The powder hissed and started to smoke and suddenly the unimaginable happened, the small flame began to shoot into all direction at the same time, reached the ceiling, wandered along the walls and filled the entire tunnel.

Greedily it ate the web and rushed into the deep. Like a roaring ball of fire it moved forwards, lit the dark tunnel segments and left burned pieces on the ceiling. On its way to the Kolomenskaya the fire narrowed and dragged all the air with it. Then the tunnel turned around and the flame that dragged a purple cape behind it was no longer to see.

In the distance Homer believed to hear an inhuman, desperate shrieking over of the deafening sound of the fire.

But the old man was still hypnotized by what he had seen so he didn't entirely trust his senses.

Hunter but his knife back into his backpack and pulled out two new and sealed filter-boxes for their gasmasks. "They were meant for the way back" He changed his filter and gave the other box to homer. Because of the fire the radiation is now as high as back then"

The old man nodded his head. The flame had whirled up radioactive particles that had deposited in the web. In the black vacuum of these tunnels there had to be milliards of death bringing molecules. Uncountable small underwater mines hang in this empty room and blocked their way. They couldn't move out of the way, there was only one way, directly through them.

"If your father could see you now" the fat man mocked her.

Sasha was sitting directly in front of her father's corpse that was laying in his blood facedown.

The kidnapper had opened his overall, he was wearing a bleached t-shirt with some kind of happily laughing animal.

Every time she raised her eyes her kidnapper blinded her with his flashlight so that she wouldn't be able to see his face. He had pulled the cloth out of her mouth but Sahsa didn't even think about pleading for something.

"You don't look like your mother. Too bad, I was hoping …" The elephant legs in the high, stained rubber boots wandered for the second time around the pillars. Sasah was leaning on them with her back so she didn't know what was going on. Now his voice came from behind. "Your father must have thought that in time they would forgive him. But there are crimes that don't lapse … Like slandering and treason". His obscure silhouette emerged out of the dark from the other side. He stopped in front of her father's corpse, kicked at it with his boot and spit out thick slime. "Too bad that the old man already died without my help"

The fat man moved the ray of light through the murky, faceless station where mountains of useless scarp laid around.

At the bicycle the light stopped. "You got a nice place here. I think if not for you, your father would have already hung himself"

While he lit the station Sasha tried to crawl away but one second later the ray of light caught her.

"I can relate" with one jump her kidnapper stood next to her. "He made a nice lady. But like I said, to bad that she doesn't look like her mother. It probably bothered him too.

Well whatever". He kicked her side with his boot so that she fell over. "After all I have crossed the entire metro to get here"

Sasha winced and shook her head.

"You see Petya how easy it was to predict what would going to happen?' once again he had turned to her father.

"Back then you always brought your rivals in front of the tribunal. And much thanks for the lifelong exile instead of the execution! Well, life is really long and your situation changes. And not always in your favor. I am back even thought it took me ten years longer than planned"

"You never accidently returned to the same place" she whispered her father's words.

"Too true" answered the fat man sarcastic. "Hey who's there?"

At the other end of the platform you could hear a scraping sound, then something heavy fell to the ground.

Some kind of hissing sound was to hear and another that sounded like steps of a big animal. The silence that followed was deceptive but Sasha and her kidnapper both felt that something approached them.

The fat man unsecured his weapon loudly and went to his knew next to her, he had pressed the stock against his shoulder and sent a flickering spot of light over the pillars that were standing around. That something had moved in the for centuries abandoned southern tunnels was scarier than if all the marble statues in the central station would have suddenly come to life.

In the wandering ray of light a blurred shadow appeared for a second, not human, because its silhouette nor its speed was human. When the ray of light had returned to the same place, strangely there was no trace left of the strange creature. A few seconds the panicky searching light caught it again, now only twenty feet away from them.

"A bear?" whispered the fat man doubting what he had just seen and pulled the trigger.

The bullets rushed to the pillars, hit the walls but the animal had vanished into thin air at the same time, not one of the shots had reached its goal. Then the fat man switched to pointless auto fire, dropped the Kalashnikov and pressed his hands onto his stomach. The flashlight rolled to the side so the light fell on the heavy, cramped figure from the ground upwards.

Without any haste a human emerged out of the twilight, with astonishing, soft and almost inaudible steps even though he was wearing heavy boots. The radiation suit was even too big for his colossal stature, so that you could actually think that he was a bear.

He didn't wear a gasmask. The cleanly shaven head that was full of scares reminded of a dried desert. One part of his face had a brave look, if not a bit rough, you could have said that it looked beautiful if it hadn't been unmoving like he was dead. It ran down cold Sasha's back when she had sawn him. The other half was just outrageously wounded, a complex network of scars made a mask of pure ugliness out of his face. Still, his appearance would have had something repulsive and not scary if it weren't for his eyes. An always wandering, half mad stare was the only thing that kept the unmoving face alive. A life without a soul.

The fat man tried to get onto his feet but slipped on the ground and immediately screamed in pain. The colossal man crouched; slowly pointed the long barrel of the suppressed pistol against the back of the fat man's head and pulled the trigger. The screaming stopped instantly, but the echo wandered around in the tomb of the station for a bit longer, like a lost creature that had been deprived of a body.

The shot had ripped his lower jaw from him, the kidnapper showed his face to her, which was now slimy red funnel. Sasha lowered her head and started to cry.

The terrible man pointed the barrel of the gun at her, slowly and sunken in his thoughts. Then he turned around and decided differently. The pistol returned to his shoulder holster and he himself stepped back as if he wanted to distance himself from his doing. He opened a flat flask and put it to his lips.

Now another character stepped onto the small stage that was lit by the fading flashlight of the fat man: An old man. He was breathing heavily and pressed his hand against his rips. He wore the same suit as the killer but moved a lot more clumsily as him. As soon as he had caught up to his follower he fell to the ground. He didn't even realize that everything was covered in blood. Only after he had rested and opened his eyes again he saw the two distorted corpses and the completely scared girl.

He had just calmed down his heart and now it started to beat faster again. Before Homer had found words for it he knew: He had found her. After all his inconclusive tries he had found the heroine for his novel which had started to take shape in front of his inner eye at night, her lips, hands, her clothing, her smell, her movement and thoughts of the person he had tried to create were now suddenly standing exactly in front of him. In flesh and blood. Directly out of his imagination.

But no, honestly he had imagines her differently, more elegant, with smother edges … And definitely older. She here had too many hard edges and her eyes weren't filled with warmth but tow splinters of hard ice. But he knew that it had been him that had been mistaken, he hadn't been able to foresee how she would be. Her chased look, the scared face, and the cuffed hands – it all fascinated him. Of course he knew how to tell many extraordinary stories but to write a tragedy of the likes of what had happened to this young woman was not in his power. Her helplessness, being exposed to the cruel world, her wonderful rescue and the way fate had woven her, his and hunters story together, all that could only mean that he was on the right path.

He believed her before she had said a single word.

Because next to everything this girl possessed a kind of beauty in her confuse, blond, sloppy cut hair, pointy ears, dirt covered cheeks, fragile, exposed, astonishing white shoulders, her childish lips, so that a spontaneous attachment joined his curiosity and pity.

Homer approached her and crouched. She lowered her head and closed her eyes. She probably didn't have a lot of contact with other people he thought. Because he didn't know what to say so he just softly held on to her shoulder.

"We need to go" growled Hunter.

"And what's with …" Homer pointed at the girl with an asking look

"Nothing, she's none of our business"

"We can't leave her here alone!"

"Then we give her a bullet" answered the brigadier harsh.

"I don't want to go with you" said the girl surprisingly clear. "Just get these handcuffs off of me. He probably has the keys" She pointed at the faceless body on the ground.

With a few moves of his hand Hunter fished the iron keys out of the fat mans pocket and threw them to the girl: "Satisfied?"

The old man played for time. "What did that pig do to you?" he asked the little one.

"Nothing" she replied while she fumbled at the lock.

"He didn't get far. He is no monster. Just a normal human being. Horrible, stupid and unforgiving. Like all."

"Not all" answered the old man but it didn't sound very convincing.

"All" repeated the girl. She made a grimace but she accomplished to stand up with her swollen feet. "Well it isn't always easy to remain human"

How fast she had laid down her fear! Now her eyes were no longer looking at the ground but she was looking at the two men as if she was up for a challenge. She fell to her knees next to one of the bodies, carefully turned it on his back, straightened his arms and kissed the forehead of the dead man. Then she turned to Hunter, closed her eyes and said "Thank you"

She took neither weapons nor any other things with her. She climbed down to the rails and walked slightly limping towards the tunnel.

The brigadier followed her with a dark look. His hand wandered undecided from his flask to his knife. Finally he had made a decision, stood up and yelled: "Wait!"


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 (masks)

The cage was still where the fat man hat beaten down Sasha. The door was open and the rat was gone … well, thought the girl, even a rat has a right for freedom.

It didn't matter; Sasha had to wear the gasmask of her kidnapper. She believed to smell the rest of his foul breath, but she could be happy that the fat man hadn't worn the mask when he had been shot.

At the middle of the bridge the radiation suddenly raised again.

It was like a miracle that she could even move in the giant radiation suit. She bounced around in it like the larva of a roach in its cocoon. The gasmask had been widened by the broad visage of the fat man, but it still stuck to her face. Sasha tried to breathe in as powerful as possible to suck the air through the tubes and filters, but while she looked outside the round glass of the gasmask she couldn't shake the feeling that she had slipped into a stranger's body. Just one hour ago this grey demon that had haunted her had been in this suit and now to get over this bridge she had to enter his world, see the world with his eyes.

With his, and with the eyes of the humans that had banished her father to the Kolomenskaya, who had let them live for all these years because their greed was stronger than their hate. Would Sasha if she wanted to disappear in the human mass continue to wear this black rubber mask? Would she have to act like she was somebody else, somebody without a face and feelings? If at least it would help her to change her inners: All that what she had suffered through, to forget and to strongly believe that she could start over again!

Sasha had wished that these two hadn't just found her out of chance, but had been sent just for her but she knew that that wasn't true. She didn't get why they took her with them: Be it for pleasure, out of pity or to prove something to each other. In the few words that the old man had thrown before her, certain sympathy had swung with it, but whatever he done now he looked after his companion, didn't speak many words and seemed too concerned to not appear too human.

The other one hadn't turned to the girl since he had allowed her to come with them to the next inhabited station a single time. Sasha had stayed behind intentionally , so that she could at least observe them from behind, but it seemed that he had felt her look, because immediately he cramped and twitched with his head but didn't turn it, maybe in favor of her girly curiosity, maybe so she would think that he didn't notice her.

The powerful built physique of the bold man, with his animal like behavior, which the fat man had mistaken for a bear, marked him as a warrior. But this picture wasn't just off his physical power. He emitted a certain strength that you could have felt if he had been thin and built small. A man of the likes of him could get anybody to follow his orders and if anybody would dare to refuse his order he would eliminate them without hesitation.

And far before Sasha was able to bring her fear of other humans under control, before she was clear about him or herself, an unknown voice told her, the voice of her inner women, that she would follow him.

The railcar proceeded astonishingly fast. Homer felt no resistance from the lever, because the brigadier did all the work. The old man raised and lowered his arms as well, out of decency, but it didn't cost him any strength.

The compact metro bridge waded with many pillars through the dark, thick water. The concrete had fallen of the iron skeleton at some parts, its legs stood so awry that one of the two lanes had kinked and fallen down.

It had been a totally functional bridge, a standard model, short lived like the new building in the outer areas of the capitol which had been designed on a drawing board.

There was nothing, nothing that was beautiful at it.

Still, Homer had to think about the magically retractable bridges of Petersburg or the elegant bridge constructions of the Krymski Most with its cast iron chains, while he looked all around him.

In the twenty years that he had lived in the metro, Homer had only been on the surface three times. Every time he had tried to see as much as he could in the small time away from his cell. To refresh his memories, to point his weakened eyes at the objects of the city, to push the rusty triggers of his visual memory and to gather as many impressions for the future. Maybe he would never have the chance to get to the beautiful places on the surface, like the Kolomenskaya, the Retschnoi Woksal or the Tjoply Stan, all three where stations that laid far away from other stations. Back then, like many other inhabitants of Moscow he had treated them in a with a condescending attitude.

With the years Moscow aged continuously, fell apart, withered away. Homer had the need to touch the disappearing bridge like that girl from the Kolomenskaya had touched the dead man again. The bridge, the grey edges of the factories, the abandoned beehives of the apartments. To dwell in their sights. To touch them, to feel that they really existed, that everything here wasn't a dream. And to say goodbye, just in case.

The line of sight was bad, the silver moonlight obtruded through the clouds so that the old man sensed his surroundings more than he perceived them. But that wasn't too bad: He was used to replacing reality with his imagination.

If it mattered, Homer just thought about what he saw right now. Forgotten legends that he had appointed himself to create and the mysterious disappearance of daylight that had busied his imagination for the last hours. He felt like a child on a field trip: He sucked in the sights, the obscure silhouettes of the skyscrapers into himself; he continuously turned his head from one side to the other and loudly talked to himself.

The others didn't enjoy the journey as much. The brigadier who silently stared into the direction they were driving only looked from time to time when he had heard a sound from underneath the bridge. His attention was directed at the point where the rails dug themselves back into the ground.

The girl behind them held the scavenged gasmask with both of her hands. He could see that she didn't feel well on the surface. In the tunnel Homer had thought that she had been tall, but the moment that they had stepped outside she was small as if she had retreated into an invisible house of a snail and even the wide radiation suit that she had taken from the body didn't make her taller. The fascinating things you could see from the bridge didn't seem to interest her and most of the time she looked at the ground.

They passed the ruins of the station Technopark. It had been built hastily not much before the war. The poor state was not the doings of the bomb attacks, but the teeth of time.

Then they finally approached the tunnel.

Compared to the bleak darkness of the night the tunnel entrance emitted absolute darkness. Homer's suit seemed to him like a real armor and he himself felt like a medieval knight that entered the cave of a legendary dragon.

The sounds of the nightly city remained at the doorstep, exactly here hunter ordered them to step from the railcar. Now you could only hear the careful steps of the three companions and the few words that echoed from the tunnel segments. The tunnel sounded strange. Homer heard the closeness of the room, as if he had climbed into the inside of a glass bottle.

"It's closed here". Hunter seemed to want to enforce their fears. The shine of the lamp exposed the resistance: A hermetic door towered in front of them like an impenetrable wall. Where the door met the rails they were shiny and the massive door angles raised themselves out of brown shreds of oil. Old planks were laying on a hill. Dried firewood and to coal turned pieces of wood were there as if there had been a campfire not long ago. The door was being used, without a doubt, but seemingly only as an exit. No bell or other signal was to see on this side.

The brigadier turned to the girl: "Is it always like that?"

"Sometimes they come out and drive to us on the other shore. To trade. I thought today …" She seemed to want to distance herself in time. Had she known that there was no more entrance, or had she kept something from them?

Hunter hammered the grip of his machete against the door as if he wanted to operate a giant metal gong. But the steel was too thick and instead of the dump echoing sound it created only an empty clanking sound. Probably nobody would have been able to hear it on the other side even if somebody was still alive there.

No answer. No miracle had happened.

Past all reason Sasha had hoped that the two would be able to open the door. She hadn't warned them that the entrance to the big metro had been closed out of fear; they could have chosen another way and left her where they had found her.

But nobody waited for them at the big metro and to break through the barricade was impossible. The bold one searched the door for a weak point or bent key holes, but Sasha already knew that you could only open it from the other side.

"You stay here". He commended them grimly. "I'll look at the barricade at the second tunnel and search for any vents"

He was silent for a moment and added: "I'll come back" then he vanished.

The old man gathered a few twigs and planks and made a sparse fire. Then he sat down at the doorstep and started to fumble in his backpack. Sasha sat down next to him and watched him out of the corner of her eyes. He made a strange spectacle, maybe for her and maybe for himself.

After he had brought a torn, dirty notebook out of his backpack he threw a distrustful look at Sasha, distanced himself from her a bit and lowered his head into the pages.

Immediately he jumped up with astonishing speed and looked it the bold one was really gone. Slowly he sneaked teen steps to the exit of the tunnel and only after he didn't see anybody there he leaned at the door, put the backpack between him and Sasha and sunk into the book.

He read restlessly, mumbling something she couldn't understand, removed his gloves, reached for his water bottle and put a few drops onto the book. Then he continued to read.

After a short time he suddenly started to clean his hands on his legs, angrily put his hand on his forehead, touched his gasmask for some reason and hastily continued to read on. Infected by his excitement Sasha let herself be distracted from her thoughts and moved closer, the old man was too busy to notice her.

Through the glass of his gasmask she could see the sparkling of his bleak green eyes which mirrored the light of the fire. From time to time he emerged from the book like he wanted to catch his breath. He abandoned his book, stared fearful at the round part of the nightly sky at the end of the tunnel, but nothing had changed. The bold head had vanished indefinitely. And as soon as he realized that he powered through the book.

Now she knew why he put water on it. He was trying to lose the pages that were stuck together from each other.

Seemingly he only succeeded with peril, once he even screamed as if he had cut himself. One page had been torn.

He cursed himself and then he realized how carefully she had watched him. Embarrassed he straightened his gasmask but he didn't say a word until he hadn't finished reading.

Then he ran to the fire and threw the notebook into it.

He didn't look at Sasha and she understood: There was no use in asking. He would just lie to her or say nothing.

There were other things that caught her attention. She guessed that the bold one had been gone for a whole hour.

Had he left them like unnecessary ballast? Sasha sat down next to the old man and said silently: "The second tunnel is closed as well. All the vents in the area are walled off. There is only this entrance"

The man looked at her but his thoughts were somewhere else. It seemed that it cost him a lot of strength to concentrate himself to hear what she just had said. "He is going to find a way. He feels it". He was silent for a minute and asked more out of politeness: "What's your name?"

"Alexandra" she answered serious: "And you?"

"Nikolai …" he started and gave her his hand, but before she could shake it he pulled it back again cramped. It seemed that he had decided differently. "Homer. I'm Homer"

"Homer. Strange nickname". Answered Sasha sunken in thoughts.

"It's my name" alleged Homer stiff and firmly.

Should she explain him that as long as she was with them these closed doors would remain closed? If the two men would have gone on their own the door could have been open.

The Kolomenskaya didn't let Sasha go. She punished her for how she had treated her father. She had tried to flee, but now the chain was strained and she couldn't break it. The station had brought her back once and it would do it again.

How strong she had tried to chase away her thoughts and emerging pictures like bloodsucking insects. They always returned, circled her and crawled into her ears and eyes.

The old man had asked Sasha something but she didn't answer. Tears came out of her eyes and once again she heard the voice of her father: Nothing is more valuable than a human life.

Now she knew what he had meant.

That what had happened at the Tulskaya was no longer a riddle for him. The explanation was much simpler and terrible then what he had thought. And now after he had deciphered the entries of the notebook a worse story began:

The diary led him on a journey of no return. Now that he had held it in his hands he wouldn't be able to get rid of it, he could burn it as often as he wanted.

Also his distrust for Hunter had been given more fuel by the irrefutable evidence even though Homer had no idea what he should do with it. What he had read in the diary contradicted what the brigadier had said. He had lied and he was aware of it. Now Homer had to find out what his lies accomplished and if they even made sense. It all depended on it if he would continue to follow Hunter and end his journey with his heroic epos or with a massacre without any live witnesses.

The first entries of the diary dated back to the first day when the caravan had passed the Nagornaya without any problems and closed in on the Tulskaya without encountering any resistance.

"We're now at the Tulskaya. The tunnel is silent and empty". Reported the radio operator. "We are a making good progress which is a good sign. The commander expects that we will be back tomorrow." A few hours after that he wrote worried: "The Tulskaya isn't guarded. We sent a scout. He disappeared. The commander has decided that we are going to enter the station as a team. We are readying ourselves to storm the station." Again a bit later he wrote: "It's difficult to understand what is going on … We talked to one of the inhabitants. It's bad. Some kind of disease". Then with he wrote with more clarity: "Some inhabitants of the station are infected with something … Some kind of unknown sickness…"

It seemed that the members of the caravan had tried to help the infected at first: "The medic doesn't know how to treat it. He says it is something like rabies … Unimaginable pain, people lose their minds and attack others". And right after that: "Once weakened by the disease they are more or less harmless. The worst thing is …" Exactly at that point the pages were stuck together and Homer tried to wet them with water so that he could separate them again. "The light hurts. Nausea. Blood in their mouth. Coughing. Then they bloat and turn to …" The word had been painted over carefully. "We don't know how it is transmitted. Through the air? Through contact?" The entry was now already from the next day. The return of the group had been delayed.

Why hadn't they reported what they had found?

Thought Homer. Instantly he remembered that he had already read the answer. He turned back some pages … "No connection. The telephone is dead. Maybe sabotage. One of the exiled, out of revenge? They had realized it before we had arrived. At first they had chased the sick into the tunnel. Maybe one of them has cut the cable?"

At that point Homer ripped himself away from the letters and stared into the dark room without seeing anything.

If they cable had been cut, why hadn't they returned to the Sevastopolskaya?

"Even worse. Until it breaks out a week passes. What if more …? Until death another week or two. Nobody knows how is sick, nobody knows how is healthy. There is no cure.

The disease is absolute deadly." On the same page the radio operator had made another entry which Homer already knew: "Chaos at the Tulskaya. No way to the metro. Hanza isn't letting anybody through. We can't go back as well."

Two pages ahead he continued: "The healthy shoot at the sick, especially at the aggressive ones. They have herded the infected into a cage … They resist, want out." Then the most horrible sentence: "They are tearing each other to pieces …"

The radio operator had been afraid too, but the iron discipline of the group had prevented it from turning into panic. Even in the midst of a deadly fever epidemic the brigade of the Sevastopolskaya held their ground.

"Have the situation under control. The station is sealed and we have a new commander". And then. "Who dies next?" read Homer. "We are all alright but not enough time has passed."

The search troop of the Sevastopolskaya had reached the Tulskaya, but had been stuck there as well. "Our orders are to stay here until the incubation period has passed so that we don't endanger …. Or forever". The radio operator noted darkly: "The situation is without hope. We can't expect help from anywhere. If we demand more men from the Sevastopolskaya we lead them to their doom. There is nothing put to endure it here … How long?"

So the mysterious guard at the hermetic door of the Tulskaya had been put there by the troop of the Sevastopolskaya. That was why the voices had been familiar to Homer: It had been people with whom he had freed the Tschertanovskaya from some monsters just a few days back!

By passing voluntarily on returning they hoped to spare their own station the epidemic …

"Mostly from human to human but apparently also through the air. Some seem immune to it. It has started a few week ago and some are still not sick … But they are becoming more and more. We are living in a morgue. Who dies next?"

The chased writing looked like a hysterical scream at that sentence. But then the radio operator had calmed down again and continued normally. "We have to do something. To warn the others. I am going to volunteer. Not to the Sevastopolskaya but to repair the broken part of the cable. We have to reach them".

Another day passed when the author had probably argued with the commander of the caravan and other soldiers.

A day where his despair had grown stronger. What the radio operator had tried to explain them, after he had calmed down again he had written down in this diary: "They don't understand! The blockade has lasted for a whole week. The Sevastopolskaya is going to sent a new troop and this one won't come back as well. Then they are going to go mobile and storm the station. But whoever gets to the Tulskaya enters the risk zone. Someone is going to infect himself and run back home. That is the end. We have to keep them from storming the station! Why don't they understand …?"

Another try to convince the leader turned out to be a failure, like the others: "They won't let me go. They have gone mad. If not me then who? I have to flee"

"I now act like I agree with them to wait here longer"

Then one day later he wrote: "I let me be assigned for guard duty at the gate. At sometime I said that I would find the place where the cable had been cut and just started running. They shot me in the back. The bullet is still inside".

Homer turned the page:"Not for me. For Natasha and Seryoschka …" Here the feather had fallen out of the weakened fingers of the author. Maybe he had added this later because there was no more room or because it made no difference where he wrote it. Then the chronologic order was there again: "At the Nagornaya they let me pass, many thanks! I have no more strength. I walk and walk. Passed out.

How long did I sleep? Don't know. Blood in the lung?

From the bullet, or am I sick? I…" The curve of the last letters stretched itself to a straight line like the encephalogram of a dying. But then he seemed to have come to his senses again and continued the sentence to an end:"Can't find the defect part"

What now flow in red streams over the paper had no more connection to each other:"The Nachimovski. I am here.

I know where the telephone is. I am going to warn them … Everything but! Rescue … Miss you … Got through.

If they heard me? The end is near. Strange, I am tired.

No more bullets. I want to sleep, before those … Standing there and waiting. Go away! … I am still alive."

He probably had written the end of the diary before that. With formal, straight writing he repeated the warning not to storm the Tulskaya, added his name, the name of who had given his live to stop that from happening

But Homer knew: The last thing the radio operator had written, before his signal had been silenced was the sentence: "Go away! … I am still alive"

A heavy silence surrounded the two humans that cowered at the fire. Homer didn't bother to get the girl to talk anymore. Silent he scratched in the ashes of the fire with a stick, there where the wet notebook burned reluctantly like a heretic and waited for the storm to blow it out.

Fate made fun of him. How he had longed to decipher the riddle of the Tulskaya. How proud had he been that he had discovered the notebook. How he had hoped to weave the threads of history by himself. Now? Now that he had found the answerer to all questions he cursed his curiosity.

Of course when he took the notebook at the Nachimovski he had worn a mask and even now he was wearing a suit. But nobody knew how this disease was transmitted!

He had been an idiot to tell himself that he hadn't much time anymore. Of course overreacting had helped him to get over sloth and fear. But death had his own will and didn't like it very much to be ordered around. And now the diary had given him a concrete ultimatum: From infection to death it was only a few weeks. It could even be a whole month: How much he still had to do in those puny thirty days!

What should he do? To confess to his companions that he was sick and to remain at the Kolomenskaya so he could die there, if not from the epidemic but hunger and radiation?

On the other hand: When he carried the terrible disease in him so were hunter and the girl who had shared the same air with him. Before all, the brigadier who had talked with the guardsmen at the Tulskaya, he had been especially close to them.

Or should he hope that the disease would spare him, to keep it to himself and wait? Not just like that but to continue the journey with Hunter. So that the storm of events that had carried him away wouldn't stop and he could continue to get his inspiration from it.

Because Nikolai Ivanovitsch, this common, useless inhabitant of the Sevastopolskaya, this former helper of the train operator, this from gravity bounded caterpillar, had to die through the discovery of this cursed diary so Homer the chronic and myth creator would come to light as a beautiful butterfly. If even just for a short time. Maybe he had been appointed a tragedy that was worthy of the feathers of the great masters, but everything depended on what he would be able to put on a piece of paper in the next thirty days.

Had he the right to let this chance pass? Had he the right to turn into an eremite, to forget his legend, to voluntarily pass on true immortality and rob all other around him from it as well? What was the bigger crime, the bigger stupidity: To carry the pest through half of the metro or to burn his manuscript with himself?

Seeking fame and without much courage he was.

Homer had already decided and just searched for arguments for it. What did it bring him that he put himself next the two corpses at the Kolomenskaya, to let himself be turned into a mummy while he was still alive? He hadn't been made for heroics. When the fighters of the Sevastopolskaya had been ready to go to their certain death at the Tulskaya it was their own decision. At least they didn't die alone.

But what was the point that homer sacrificed himself?

He couldn't stop hunter anyways. The old man had carried the epidemic around with him unknowingly – but Hunter knew exactly what was going on at the Tulskaya. No wonder that he had ordered the complete destruction of all the inhabitants of the station, including the caravan from the Sevastopolskaya. And no wonder he had wanted to use flamethrowers so badly.

But if both of them had already been infected they wouldn't be able to avoid that the epidemic would hit the Sevastopolskaya. And the first humans to be hit would be all the people that had been next to him. Yelena. The head of the station. The commander of the outer guard posts. The adjutants. So in three weeks the station would have no more leadership. Chaos would emerge and finally the epidemic would kill all others.

But why had hunter returned when he had known that they had been infected? Gradually Homer realized that the brigadier hadn't acted out of intuition but he had followed a certain plan step by step. But then the old man had mixed the cards new.

So was the Sevastopolskaya doomed to go under and did his expedition have no more reason? Even if Homer would have wanted to return home to be reunited with Yelena in death it was impossible. Alone the way from the Kachovskaya to the Kaschirskaya had been enough to render their gasmask useless and the suits that had got dozen if not hundredths of Röntgen and they had to dispose of them very soon. What to do now?

The girl had rolled together and slept. The campfire had finally eaten the infected diary, the last twigs and had gone out. To save the batteries in his lamp homer decided to wait in the dark as long as possible.

No, he would continue to follow the brigadier! To reduce the risk of infecting others he would avoid contact with them, leave the backpack with his things here, destroy his clothes, hope for a merciful fate and keep an eye on the thirty day countdown. Every day he would work on his book.

Somehow everything would be solved, he said to himself. The main thing was that he followed Hunter.

If he came back.

It had been over an hour since he had vanished through the obscure exit of the tunnel. Homer had talked to the girl to calm her down but he wasn't entirely convinced that the brigadier would return.

The more he found out about him the less he understood him. It was possible to doubt the brigadier and to believe him at the same time. He didn't follow any pattern, didn't show common human ways. When he trusted himself to him he exposed himself to Mother Nature. But for Homer it was too late: He had already done it. To regret was pointless.

In the darkness the silence now seemed impenetrable to him. Like through a thin bowl he could hear a strange whispering sound, a distance howling and a rustling sound …

Homer thought it sounded like the staggering walk of one of the corpse eaters then again it was like the giant ghost at the Nagornaya and finally like the screams of the dying.

After not even ten minutes he gave up.

He switched his lamp back on and winched.

Two steps away from him Hunter was standing, his arms crossed in front of his chest and looking at the sleeping girl. He protected his eyes from the blinding ray of light and said calmly:"They are going to open the door very soon"

Sasha dreamt … When she was alone at the Kolomenskaya and waited for the return of her father's expedition. He was late and she definitely had wait and help him out of the radiation suit, pull of the gasmask and help him eat. The table was already laid and she didn't know what else she could to do to keep herself occupied. She already wanted to go away from the door that lead the surface but what when he came back when she wasn't around? Who would open him? So she sat on the cold ground at the exit, hours passed, days went by and he didn't come. But she wouldn't leave her place until the door …

The dump beating of opening bars awoke her; it was the same sound like at the Kolomenskaya. She awoke smiling, her father had returned. The she looked around and remembered everything.

The only thing that had been real about her dream was the groaning of the heavy bars on the iron gate. Only a few moments later the giant door started to vibrate and opened slowly. A ray of light fell through the widening space and it smelled of burnt diesel. The entrance to the big metro …

The doors itself had opened without a sound and gave allowed the look into the inners of the tunnel that lead to the Avtosavodskaya Nad and later to the ring. On the rails was a big railcar with a smoking motor, a searchlight at the front and a lot of men as its crew. Through the sights of their machine guns the men saw to blinking wanderers that held their hands in front to their eyes.

"I want to see your hands!" Sounded the order.

She followed the example of the old man and both complied and raised their arms. It was the same railcar that had come to them over the bridge on market day. These people knew about Sasha – probably now the old man with his strange name had to regret taking the cuffed girl with them without asking how she had ended up at this godforsaken station.

"Gasmask down, Id's." Commanded one of the men on the railcar. While Sasha exposed her face she cursed her stupidity. Nobody could free them. The sentence over her father and over her had still all of its power. How could she have been so naive that those two men could have brought her into the metro? That nobody would recognize them at the border?

The men recognized her instantly. "Hey, you can't go in here! You have ten seconds to leave. And who is that? Is that your …"

"What's going on?" Said the old man confused.

"Let him in peace! It's not him!" screamed Sasha.

"Leave!" The voice from the men with the assault rifle was cold as ice. "Or we …"

"At the girl?" Asked a second voice unsure.

"Hey, didn't you hear us?'

She definitely had heard how they unsecured their rifles.

Sasha stepped back and closed her eyes . For the third time in a few hours she stood in before the face of death.

Then she heard a small whistling noise. In the now reigning silence she waited in for the last order. It never came. Finally she couldn't stand it anymore and opened one eye.

The motor was still smoking. Blue-grey clouds swam around the white ray of the search light that had fallen over for some reason. Now that the light didn't blind her anymore Sasha could recognize the people on the railcar.

Those were lying around like folded puppets on the railcar and on the tracks. Mindlessly hanging arms, unnatural twisted necks and bent in torsos.

Sasha turned around. Behind her was the bold one. He had lowered his pistol and watched the railcar carefully, which now looked like a butcher's counter. Then he raised the barrel and pulled the trigger again.

"That was it." He said dump but satisfied. "Take their uniforms and gasmasks from them."

"Why?" The face of the old man was distorted by his fear.

"We have to change clothes. We are taking their railcar to get to the Avtosvodskaya!"

Sasha starred at the killer. Inside of her fear and admiring fought with each other. Disgust mixed with thankfulness. He had just eliminated three with one blow and violated her father's most important rule. But he had done it to safe her – well and the old man's life of course. Was it a coincidence that he had done it for the second time? Could it have been that she had mistaken his cruelty with strictness?

One thing was clear: The fearlessness of this man let her forget his ugliness …

The bold one was the first to walk over to the railcar and start to rip off the enemies' rubber scalps from their heads. Suddenly he tumbled back and made a dump scream as if he had seen the devil himself, put both of his hands in front of him and repeated several times: "A dark one!"


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 (Air)

Fear and terror aren't in the slightest way the same, fear pushes, forces you to act, makes you inventative, terror paralyzes body and mind and steals humans their humanity.

Homer had seen enough in his life to know the difference between the two.

The brigadier didn't know fear, but terror could apparently overthrow him. But that wasn't what Homer was wondering right now but even more what had trigged the reaction.

The body in the gasmask had an extraordinary look.

Under the black rubber a dark shimmering skin was exposed, full lips and a broad, slightly compressed nose.

Homer had never seen any people with dark skin in the ten years without music channels. But he realized immediately that the dead man was an Afro-American. A rarity in the metro for sure. But was so terrifying about him?

The brigadier had already calmed down; the strange seizure hadn't lasted for a minute. He lit the flat face, groaned something incomprehensible, and started to undress the resisting body. Homer could have sworn that some finger bones broke.

"They want to mock me … With friendly greetings, what? … And this here is supposed to be humane? … Such a punishment…" mumbled hunter silently.

Had he mistaken the body for somebody else? Did he maim the dead man out of revenge for the humiliation that he had just suffered, or was there an older and more serious score to settle? While Hunter suppressed his disgust while he removed the clothes of the generic looking body, he looked covertly again and again to the brigadier.

The girl didn't participate in the scavenging and hunter let her in peace. She sat a distance on the rail, her face in her hands Homer believed that she was crying.

Finally Hunter threw the body outside the door on a pile. In not even 24 hours there would be nothing left. By day the city was ruled by such terrible creatures that even the most dangerous ones retreated into their caves without complain and wait for their hour.

The strange, but still fresh blood on the dark uniform was not to se but it stuck cold to belly and chest as if it wanted to return to a living organism again. It created a disgusting impulse on the skin and on the mind.

And homer asked himself if this masquerade was even necessary. He reassured himself that at least they would be able to prevent more victims at the Avtosavodskaya. When hunters plan would work they would pass through freely, thinking they were one of them …. But what if not? Did he even have the intention to leave unnecessary victims behind?

The bloodlust of the brigadier disgusted Homer but also fascinated him at the same time. Not even a third of his murders could be justified by self defense, but still there was even more sadism behind them than usual. More importantly a question tormented the old man: Had hunter volunteered to just go to the Tulskaya to satisfy his bloodlust in the end?

The unlucky that had laid a trap for them hadn't found a cure for the mysterious fever but that didn't mean that there was none. Here in the underground there existed places were more scientific thinking was present, where people researched, developed new medicaments and mixed serums together. For example polis, the heart of the metro where all four arteries ran together, the polis was the last allusion of a city which stretched over the labyrinth of stations from the Arabatskaya, Borovizkaya, Alexandrovski sad and Biblioteca Imeni Linian.

And there before all doctors and scientist had settled down. Or the giant bunker next to the Taganskaya, the secret city of science for hanza.

Also the Tulskaya may not have been the only station where the epidemic had stricken. Probably they had fought it successfully? How could you abandon hope for rescue that easily? Of course now that Homer carried the time bomb inside him he only cared about his own egoistic interests. His mind had already made his peace with the death that was in front of him, but his instincts resisted and ordered him to find a way out. Maybe if he found a way to rescue the Tulskaya he could save his own station from oblivion and maybe even himself …

Hunter on the other hand seemed to apparently believe that there was a cure for the disease. ..

The few words that he had exchanged with the guard at the Tulskaya had been enough to condemn them to death and make himself the judge of the sentence. First he had led the commander of the Sevastopolskaya on a false path then he had fastened the decision and now he readied the uncompromised implementation: The Tulskaya would go under in fire.

But maybe he knew something about the events at the station that turned everything on its head again? Something that nobody knew, whether Homer nor the man that had left his diary at the Nachimovski Prospect …

After he was finished with the bodies the brigadier ripped the flask from its holder and sucked the rest of the contents. What had been in it? Alcohol? Was this a potion or an ingredient, or did he try to dispel the sour aftertaste in his mouth? Did he enjoy the moment or search for forgetting or hope to kill something with the alcohol?

The old smoking railcar was something like a time machine for Sasha, like in those fables her father had told her.

It didn't just transport her from the Kolomenskaya to the Avtosavodskaya, but transported her for the present into the past. Even though she didn't know if she could call her life in this prison made of stone, this worm tunnels, the past and where she was now the "present".

She remembered the whole journey there: Her father had been bound and was sitting next to her, a sack over his eyes and a gag in his mouth. She had just been a small girl and had cried all the way and one of the soldier of the execution squad had made animals with his fingers, their shadows had danced over a small yellow stage which was on the ceiling. The shadows had tried to outrun the railcar.

When they had reached the other side they had told her father his sentence: The tribunal of the revolution had pardoned him. The death sentence had been replaced by lifelong exile. They had pushed them onto the rails, with a knife, an assault rifle with a spare clip and an old gasmask and sat Sasha next to him. The soldier hat showed her the horse and the dog hat waved his hand after her. Had he been one of those that Hunter had shot?

When she put on the black gasmask of one of the dead, her feelings became stronger that she was breathing the air of a dead man. Every small part of her journey somebody paid with his life. Probably the bold one would have shot them no matter what, but now Sasha thought to be his accomplice by just being there.

That her father didn't want to return back home wasn't because he had been tired of fighting. He had once said that his humiliation and deprivation did no longer weigh on another strangers life, so he had preferred to suffer himself then to cause anybody else harm again. Sasha hadn't know that the scale of life had been filled heavy on his side, with all those that her father had on his conscience and he had tried to bring it back into balance.

The bold one could have acted sooner, could have scared the people on the railcar just by his presence so that they could have laid down their weapons without firing a shot. None of the dead had been an equal enemy.

Why did he do all this?

The station of her childhood approached sooner then she thought. Not even ten minutes passed until the lights started to flicker. The tunnel to the Avtosavodskaya wasn't guarded; it seemed that the inhabitants relied on the hermetic gates. Around fifty meters before the train platform the bold one slowed down the motor, commanded the old man to take over the steering wheel and stood next to the machine gun.

The railcar rolled almost silent and very slowly into the station. Or was it time itself that was bending for Sasha, because she overlooked everything with a few looks and only remembered her childhood?

It was on that day that her father had ordered the adjutant to hide until everything was over. The man had lead them deep into the work offices in the belly of the station, but even there you could still hear the screams of hundredths of throats shouting at the same time and her companion had immediately rushed back to his commander. Sasha had followed him, out into the main hall of the station …

While they slithered over the train platform Sasha saw the roomy family tents and the two into offices converted train wagons, children played catch, old men put their heads together, cranky women were cleaning guns …. And she saw her father behind a small troop of grim, maybe even scary looking men, how they tried to keep the never ending and angry group of people at bay. She ran to him and pressed herself against his back. Surprised he shook her away, turned around and hit the surprised adjutant angrily into his face. But something had happened. The formation that had already readied their rifles for the fire order got the all-clear. There was only one shot into the air, her father explained that he was ready to hand over the station to the revolutionaries peacefully and negotiate.

Her father had always firmly believed that man got a sign.

You had to recognize them and interpret them correctly.

But time hadn't just slowed down so that Sasha could relieve the last days of her childhood. Before all she had seen the armed man that had risen to stop the railcar. She saw how the bold one appeared behind the heavy machine gun with in a fluent motion and how he pointed the heavy barrel at the surprised guards.

Like the sound of a whip the order to stop the railcar came to her ear. She knew: In just a few seconds so many people would die that the feeling that she was breathing the air of a stranger would last to the end of days.

She could still prevent a bloodbath, she could still rescue these people, herself and another human being from something terrible.

The guardsmen were already un-securing their assault rifles, but they took too long, the bold one was a few seconds ahead of them…

She did the only thing that came to her mind.

She jumped up and hugged the iron hard back, crossed her hands in front his not moving chest that didn't seem to breathe. The bold one winched as if somebody had hit him, but he hesitated. The soldiers on the other side that were ready to shoot froze as well.

The old man realized immediately.

The railcar spat out bidder black clouds and rushed on and the Avtosavodskaya remained behind them.

In the past.

During the drive to the Pavelezkaya nobody said a word. Hunter had had freed himself out of the surprising hug of the girl. He had bent her arms away from him like a ring of iron that had been too tight.

They rushed past a single guard post with full speed.

The salves that they sent behind them went right over their heads into the ceiling. The brigadier was just quick enough to pull out his pistol and fire three silent bullets as an answer. He managed to kill one of the guards as it seemed, the other ducked behind the flat tunnel segments and got away with their lives.

I don't believe this, thought homer and looked at the girl that was covering on the ground. He had hoped that the entry of the female protagonist would have created some kind of love story but this was developing way too fast. He didn't even have time to realize what it meant, far less to note it down.

Only when they had reached the Pavelezkaya they decreased in speed.

The old man already knew the station: It seemed to be from a horror novel. While the tombs of the newer station in Moscow's outer regions rested on normal pillars, the Pavelezkaya rested on an array of tall and round arches that were bigger than any humans. Like commonly in a horror novel there was a curse on the Pavelezkaya: At exactly eight o clock at night the station were soon before busy deals were made emptied. From all the busy, yes even sly inhabitants only a few daredevils remained on the platform. All other disappeared with children, furniture, bags full of wares, not even benches and stretchers remained.

They crawled into their bunker, the almost one kilometer long tunnel to the ring line, shivered there for the entire night because there were the Pavelezkaya station was, terrible creatures awoke on the surface and ran around. It was said that the entire region was under their unchallenged rule and even when those creature slept other didn't dare to go near them. The inhabitants of the Pavelezkaya were at their mercy because the hermetic doors that protected other stations and the escalators where missing here entirely so that the entrance to the surface was always open.

In homers opinion there was no worse place to rest and camp overnight but Hunter seemed to think differently: He brought the railcar to a stop at the end of the station, took of his gasmask and pointed at the train platform. "We'll remain here until morning. Search for a place to sleep"

Then he left. The girl looked after him then rolled together on the hard ground of the railcar. Even homer tried to make himself as comfortable as possible. In vain: Once again his thoughts were with the epidemic and how he would carry it through all the healthy stations. The girl was silent as well, but awake.

"Thanks'" she said suddenly. "At first I thought you were just like him"

"I don't think there is anybody just like him" said Homer.

"Are you friends?"

"Like a shark and its pilot fish" He smiled sadly because he thought how much this picture was fitting: Of course it was hunter that eliminated all these humans, but a few bloody shreds were of his doings.

She stood up a bit. "What do you mean?"

"Where he goes I go. I think I can't go alone anywhere without him and he … Well maybe he thinks that I clean him up like one of the pilot fish. But I don't really know what he is thinking myself.

The girl sat down closer next to the old man: "And what do you want from him?"

"I have a feeling that as long as I am near him … I keep my inspiration"

"What does inspiration mean?"

"Actually it means to breathe in something"

"What do you want to breathe in? What does it get you?"

Homer shrugged his shoulders. "It is nothing that we breathe in. It is what something breathes into us.

The girl drew something into the dirty floor of the railcar. "As long as you breathe in death nobody is going to want to touch your lips. Everybody is going to back away from the smell of corpses"

"When you see death you think about many things" said Homer short.

"That doesn't give you the right to cause death anytime you want to think about something" she said.

"I'm not doing that" justified the old man. "I am just standing next to him. But for me it is not about death, not just about it. It is so that I will be shook awake, to get my head clear"

"Have you had a bad life?" asked the girl caring.

"A boring one. When one day is like the other, they fly by so fast that the last seems to approach with great speed"

Homer tried to explain. "You fear that can't take care of things anymore. And every day is filled with thousands of small things. After you are finished with one you shortly catch a breath and do the next thing. At the end you don't have the strength or the time to do something really important. You think to yourself: Ok, I'll just start tomorrow.

But that tomorrow never comes and it is always today"

"Have you seen many stations?" It seemed that she hadn't really listened to him.

"I don't know" answered homer surprised. "Probably all"

"I only two" sighed the girl. "At first my father and I lived at the Avtosavodskaya, and then they chased us away, to the Kolomenskaya. I have always wished to see at least one other. But this one here is so strange". Her view wandered along the array of round arcs. "Like thousands of entrances without any walls in between them. Now they are all open, but I no longer want to go there. I am afraid"

"The second one … Was that your father?" Homer hesitated. "Has he been killed?"

The girl retreated into her snail house and was silent for a while before she answered: "Yes".

Homer took a deep breath. "Stay with us. I am going to talk to Hunter that I need you, to …" He spread his arms but he didn't know how he could explain to the girl that she would be his muse (Greek goddess of inspiration).

"Tell him that he needs me". She jumped onto the rails and distanced herself from the railcar. While doing so she looked at every single pillar she passed.

She wasn't a bit flirtiest nor did she play with him. She wasn't interested in guns and she felt as indifferent about using her female arsenal, like gripping looks and lovely gestures. She didn't know anything about, that a single opening of the eyes could create a storm, and that some people were ready to sacrifice or kill others for an indicated smile. Or was she just not able to use them in the right way?

Whatever, she didn't need this arsenal. With her hard, direct look she had forced Hunter to change his decision, with a single move she had thrown her net over him and stopped him from committing another murder.

Had she broken his armor? Had she found his soft core? Or did he need her for something? Probably the last one: Alone the thought about the brigadier having a weakness, what didn't make him vulnerable put sensitive, was too much for Homer.

He just could not sleep. Even though he had changed the heavy and sticky gasmask with a light one he still had trouble breathing and it was like somebody had put his head into a press.

Homer had left all his possessions at the tunnel. He had cleaned his hands with a piece of grey soap, washed away the dirt with the foul water out off a canister and decided to wear a gasmask at all times. What else could he do protect the people in his immediate area?

Nothing. Truly nothing anymore. Not even to go away, fight through the tunnels and become a rotten pile of shreds would have helped. But now that he was so close to death it immediately put him back more than twenty years, into his time, when he had just lost the people that he had loved. And this gave his plans new and true purpose.

If it would have been in Homers power he would have given them a memorial. But they had earned even a common tombstone. They had been born centuries apart and all had died on the same day: His wife, his children and his parents.

And his classmates and friends at school. The actors and musicians that he had worshipped. All who still had been at work, already at home or stuck in traffic.

Those that died and those that remained for many days in the irradiated, half destroyed capitol, had tried to survive and weakly scrapped at the closed security gates of the metro.

Those that had been instantly pulverized into their smallest atoms and those that had bloated and fallen into pieces, eaten alive by radiation sickness.

The scouts that were the first to go to the surface had trouble finding sleep for many days. Homer had met some of them at the campfire near the transfer station. In their eyes there was still the inextinguishable impression that the city had left on them, their eyes were like frozen rivers that spilled over with dead fish. Thousands of not moving cars with their lifeless passengers that blocked the prospects and exits of Moscow. Bodies everywhere. Nobody there to get rid of them until finally new creatures took over the reign of the city.

To keep their sanity they avoided schools and kindergartens. But it was enough to lose your mind to if you coincidentally saw the staring look through the dusty window from the backseat of the family car.

Milliards of lives had stopped. Milliards of words left unspoken, milliards of dreams left unfulfilled and milliards of arguments unforgiving. Nikolais youngest son had asked him for a big package of colored felt tip pens for some time, his daughter had been afraid of figure skating training and his wife had described to him who they should do a short vacation, just the two of them at the ocean, before going to bed …

When he had realized that their small wishes and passions had been their last, they appeared far more important to him.

He would have liked to engrave a memorial plate for every one of them, but an engraving on a giant mass grave of humanity was also a worthy cause. And now that his time was running out he thought that he now knew how to find the right words.

He didn't know in which order he should put them together yet, with what he could fix them to a place, with what he would decorate them, but he felt: In the story that played in front of his eyes he would find a place for all the restless souls, all the feelings and all the small grains of knowledge that he had gathered so meticulously. In the end also for himself. This plot was best for this, better then for anything.

As soon as he would be up there again and it would be bright and the merchant s would venture to their station again he would try to find a clean notebook and a pen. He had to hurry: If he didn't bring this mirage of his novel that was floating in the distance to paper soon it could disappear into thin air again and he didn't know how long he would have to sit on the dune and stare at the horizon in the h hope that out of tiny grains of sands and flickering air again a personal ivory tower would emerge.

He may even didn't have enough time for that.

An ironic smile was on his lips, Homer thought: Whatever the girl said, it was the look in her empty eyes of that forced him to act. Then he had to think about the curved eyebrows, the two bright rays in her dark, dirty face, the chewed on lips, the shaggy blond hair and he smiled again.

Tomorrow at the market hew would have to search for something for her as well, he thought while he started to sleep.

At the Pavelezkaya the night was always restless. The shine of the stinking torches twitched over the marble walls, the tunnel breathed restlessly, only at the foot of the escalator a few silhouettes talked to each other almost inaudible. The station acted like it was dead. Everyone hoped that the wild creatures on the surface didn't lust after corpses.

But sometimes the curious animals discovered the deep down reaching entrance and smelt the fresh sweat, heard the regular beating of human hearts and felt the warm blood running through their veins.

And sometimes they even came down.

Homer had finally sunken into a half sleeplike state and the excited voice on the other side of the train platform only got through to his conscience with struggle and distorted. But then the sound of the machine gun ripped him out of his slumber. The old man jumped up and searched the floor of the railcar for his weapon.

The ear numbing heavy machine gun salve was joined by shots out of assault rifles. The screams of the guards weren't just nervous but scared. Whatever it was that they were shooting at with their calibers they seemed to not do any damage. From an organized defense against the moving target was not to speak, here people fired around wildly and only thought about saving their own skin.

Finally Homer had found his Kalashnikov but he didn't dare to step onto the train platform. He resisted the temptation to start the motor and flee and it didn't matter to him where. He remained on the railcar and put his head through the pillars to watch the place where the fighting was happening.

Suddenly the penetrating scream came from a close distance, where the guards yelled and cursed. The heavy machine gun fire ebbed, somebody screamed terrible and then turned silent. Sudden like something had ripped his head off.

Again the assault rifles sounded off, but only scarce and only for a short time. Again screaming, it seemed further away … And suddenly the creature that had made the sound and which echo he had heard came from the close proximity of the railcar.

Homer counted to ten and started the motor with his shivering hands. Every moment his companions would return and or he would leave, he did this for them not for himself …

The railcar vibrated, started to smoke, the motor overheated and something jumped through the pillars unimaginably fast. Fast like lighting it disappeared out of his point of view, so that no picture of it could emerge in his head.

The old man held on to the rails, put his foot on the accelerator and took a deep breath. If they wouldn't return in ten seconds he would leave them and …

Without realizing he had stepped onto the train platform and was holding the useless assault rifle in front of him. He just wanted to make sure that he couldn't help his people.

He pressed himself against the pillar and threw a look at the middle floor …

He wanted to scream but his lungs were missing the air.

Sasha had always known that the world wasn't just the two stations where she had lived up till now. But she had never known that the world was so beautiful. Even the boring, yes even dreary Kolomenskaya had been a comfortable home and she had known every inch of it. The Avtosavodskaya, roomy and cold had arrogantly turned away from her father, exiled him and she couldn't forget about it.

Her relationship to the Pavelezkaya on the other hand wasn't unstressed and with every minute Sasha felt that she was falling in love with the station. The soft, wide reaching pillars, the big, inviting arches, the noble marble, the fine veins on the walls let it look like the soft skin of a human …

Had the Kolomenskaya dreary poor and the Avtosavodskaya been dark, this station was like a woman: In her unworried and playful nature the Pavelezkaya had even after centuries retained her former beauty.

The humans here couldn't bee merciless or evil, thought Sasha. She and her father would have only had to get over two hostile station to get to this magical place … He would have just had to live one more day to escape from exile and get his freedom … She would have forced the bold one to take both of them with them …

In the distance a campfire flickered where moments before the guardsman had sat around. The ray of light of the search light climbed up to the high ceiling but Sasha didn't get pulled to there. How many years had she believed that she had just to escape the Kolomenskaya and to meet other peoples to be happy! But now she only wanted one human to share her company, her awe that the earth was a whole third bigger and her hope that she could repair it. But who would need her, Sasha? No other human would need her, no matter what she and the old man had said.

And so the girl walked into the other direction, there were a fallen train with smashed windows and an open door stood in the half of the right tunnel. She stepped into the wagon, from one to the next, inspected the first, the second and then the third. In the last one she discovered a miraculously unharmed couch and laid on it. She looked up and imagined that the train would start to drive to the next station at any second where bright and loud human voices were. But now she didn't have enough strength to imagine that all these tons of steel scraps would move from its place.

With her bicycle it had been a lot easier.

Then the game of hide and seek was at an end: The sound of a fight jumped from wagon to wagon to Sasha's and finally reached her.

Again?

She jumped up and ran onto the train platform, the only place where she could still do something.

The shredded corpses of the guards were lying next to the glass cabin with the not moving search light, over the burnt down fire in the middle of the hall. Other fighters had apparently given up early and started running to find cover in the passage way, but death had caught up to them halfway.

Over one of the bodies a terrible and unnatural figure was covering down. Even though you could only see it badly from this distance, Homer recognized a smooth white skin, a powerful, twitching comb and the impatiently twitching legs with many strongly bent joints.

The battle was lost.

Where was Hunter? Homer leaned forwards again and froze …. Maybe ten steps from him, leaning as far behind the pillar as Homer, as if it wanted to lure him or play with him. A terrible visage started down from its height of two meters. From its lower jaw it dripped red and the heavy jaw gnawed on a terrible chunk of flesh. Never endingly. Under the flat forehead there was nothing, but that the creature had no eyes didn't seem to keep it from sensing other beings or from moving or attacking.

Homer turned around and pulled the trigger but the rifle remained silent. The chimera made a long ear numbing scream and jumped into the middle of the hall. Panicking Homer fumbled with the locking handle, even though he knew that there was no use in it …

But suddenly the creature lost all interest in him, and turned its attention to the train platform. With a strong movement Homer followed the look of the blind creature and his heart set out a beat.

There stood, scarred and looking around, the girl.

"Run!" yelled Homer and his voice suffocated a painful croaking sound.

The white chimera jumped forward many meters and now stood directly in front of the young women. She pulled out a knife that you should only use to cook,and made a threatening move to the side.

As an answerer the creature swooshed with its front paws at the girl and she fell to the ground. The blade flew to the side.

Homer already stood next to the railcar but he didn't think about fleeing. Rasping he waved his assault rifle and tried to get the white dancing silhouette into his sights.

Without success: The creature had reached the girl.

The guards that could have been a threat to this creature had been shredded after a few minutes and now there were only these two helpless beings left, backed into a corner.

I seemed to want to play with them for a while before it killed them.

It was hovering over Sasha so that the old man couldn't see anything. Was it turning her insides out?

But then it winched and moved back, scratched at a bigger getting spot on its back with its claws, turned around screaming, ready to eat its attacker.

Hunter stumbled to the creature.

In one hand an automatic assault rifle and the other hanging down limp. You could see that every move hurt.

The brigadier shot another salve at the creature, but it turned out to be surprisingly tough, it tumbled for a second, found its center of gravity again and stormed forwards.

Hunters bullets were dried up but he was able to bury his machete into the enormous chest of the creature. The chimera fell on it, buried it under it and suffocated him with its weight.

Like if it wanted to destroy all hope second creature jumped next to it. It stared over the twitching body of its own kind, put a claw on the white skin as if it wanted to wake it and turned its eyeless grimace to Homer …

He couldn't pass that chance. The big caliber shredded the chest of the chimera, split its head and when the animal had finally fallen to the ground split the marble plates to shreds and dust. Homer needed time until his heart had calmed down and his finger had loosened from the trigger.

Then he closed his eyes, ripped the mask from his head and breathed in the cold air that was filled with the smell of fresh blood.

All heroes had fallen and he had been left on the battlefield.

His book was over before it had begun.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 (After death)

What remains of the dead? What remains of every one of us? Tombstones sink in, moss covers the, and after a few centuries the insignia can no longer be read.

Even in earlier times a grave who nobody cared about anymore, would be assigned to a new dead. Most only visited their children or the adults of the dead, grandchildren even less often and grand-grandchildren almost never.

What was called everlasting peace, only lasted half a century in big cities, then the bones where disturbed, to increase the density of the grave because you wanted to transform the graveyard into a suburb. The earth had become too small, for the living and the dead.

In half a century that had become a luxury that only few could afford who had died before judgment day. But who cares about a single body when the whole planet is dying.

None of the inhabitants of the metro had had the honor of a funeral; nobody could hope that the rats would spare their body.

Earlier the remains of humanity had only had the right to be there as long as the living remembered them. A human being remembers their relatives, their friends and colleagues. But his conscience reached only back three generations. Just more then fifty years.

With the same ease you let the picture of our grandfather or your friend from school out of our conscience into absolute nothingness. The memories of a human can last longer than the bones, but as soon as the last one who remembers us had passed we dissolve with time.

Photographs, who makes them anymore? And how many of them were kept when everybody still made them?

Back then there was almost no more space in the thick family album for old and brown turned pictures, but almost nobody who looked through it could say for sure who was on the photos. The photographs of the past can be interpreted as some kind of death masks, but not as a print of their soul when they were living.

And the photographs only decay slower as the body that was on them.

What remains?

Our children?

Homer touched the flame of the candle with his fingers. The answer wasn't easy to find for him, Achmed's words still hurt him. He himself had been damned to be without children, unable for this kind of immortality, so he couldn't do anything but choose this path to immortality.

Again he reached for his pen.

They can look like us. In their reflection we mirror ourselves in a mysterious way. United with those we had loved. In their gestures, their memes we happily find ourselves or with sorrow.

Friends confirm that our sons and daughters are just like us. Maybe that gives us a certain extension of ourselves when we are no more.

We ourselves weren't the first. We have been made out of countless copies that have been before us, just another chimera, always half from our fathers and mothers who were again the halfs of their parents. So is there nothing unique in us but are we just an endless mixture of small mosaic parts that never endingly exist in us? Have we been formed out of milliards of small parts to a complete picture that has no own worth and has to fall into its parts again?

Does it even matter to be happy if we found ourselves in our children, a certain line that has been traveling through our bodies for millions of years?

What remains of me?

Homer had it harder than the rest. He had always envied those who had put faith in life after death. Whenever he had come to this conversation about the end of life his thoughts had always turned to the Nachimovski prospect immediately, with its disgusting and corpse eating creatures.

But maybe he was made of something more than flesh and blood, which sooner or later would be eaten by corpse eaters and digested.

Only: If there existed something in him it existed as a part of his body.

What had remained of the Egyptian pharaohs? What of Greece's heroes? From the artists of the renaissance? Did something remain of them and did it exist inside of their bodies or in what they had left behind?

What kind of immortality was left for mankind?

Homer again read what he had written, thought about it for a short time, ripped the pages out of the notebook carefully, crumpled them up and put them on an iron plate and lit them. After a minute, from the work he had done in the last three hours there was only a handful of ash left.

She had died.

Sasha had always imagined death like that: The last ray of light had been extinguished, all sounds silenced, her body without any feelings and nothing but darkness.

Humanity had emerged out of darkness and silence.

It was inevitable that they would return to it. Sasha knew all the fables of paradise and hell, but the underworld had sounded harmless to her. Eternity in absolute blindness, deafness and absolutly not being able to do nothing at all was a hundredth times more terrible than some cauldrons with cooking oil in them.

But then a small shivering ray of light appeared.

Sasha reached for it but couldn't touch it: The dancing ray of light ran away from her, came back, lured her, and ran away from her again immediately. Playing and luring her. She knew immediately: A tunnel light.

When a human died in the metro, her father had said, his or her soul was lost and had to wander the dark labyrinth of tunnels that lead nowhere. It didn't realize that it wasn't bound to a body anymore, its earthly life had ended and so it had to wander around long before someday in the distant future it would see the shine of the ghostly fire. So it would guide her there, because this little fire had been sent to lead the soul to find its cold rest. But it can also happen that the fire had pity of on the soul and brought it back to his or her lost body. For these people you could say that they had returned from the beyond. It was more truthful to say that darkness had let them go again.

The tunnel light lured Sasha, again and again; in the end she didn't resist and accepted her fate. She didn't feel her legs anymore, but she wouldn't need them: To follow the spot of light she just had to keep it in her eyes. She had to fix her eyes on it as if she wanted to talk it over and tame it.

Sasha had caught the light with her gaze and it pulled her through the darkness, through the labyrinth of the tunnels which she wouldn't have been able to leave if she had been on her own. Until they reached the last station of the lifeline.

And then she saw it in front of her: Her guide seemed to sketch the contours of a far room where they waited for her.

"Sasha!" yelled a voice after her. Surprised she registered that she knew the voice, but she didn't know to whom she belonged anymore. In it a full, know, caring tone swung with it.

"Father?" she said unbelieving.

They had come. The ghostly tunnel fire stood still, turned into a common fire, jumped onto a wick of a molten candle and made its home comfortable like a cat that had returned from an expedition …

A cold, wrinkled hand was on her hand. Slowly Sasha loosened her look from the flame because she feared that she could sink into the ground at any time. As soon as she awoke she felt the stinging pain in her lower arm and in her forehead. Out of the darkness simple furniture appeared tumbling: A few chairs, a dresser … Sasha herself was lying on a stretcher that was so soft that she couldn't feel her back.

She felt as if her body only came back to her gradually.

"Sasha?" Repeated the voice.

She looked at the person that was speaking and hastily retracted her hand. At the bed the old man who had been with her on the railcar was sitting. His touch had been without any claim, neither harsh nor indecent. Shame and disappointment had made her retract her hand: How could she have mistaken the voice of a stranger with the one of her father's? Why had the tunnel light led her back here from all places?

The old man smiled softly. He seemed to be pleased that she had awoken again. Only now she recognized the same warm shine in his eyes which she had only seen in wit one other human. No she knew that she had been mistaken …

She was ashamed of herself.

"Forgive me." She said. In the next moment she remembered the last minutes at the Pavelezkaya. With a strong movement she rose up. "How's your friend?"

She didn't know if she should cry or laugh. Maybe she just didn't have the strength for it.

Luckily the razor sharp claws of the chimera had missed the girl; only the paws had hit her. But she had been unconscious for the whole day. The doctor had reassured Homer that her life was in no longer in danger. He hadn't told his own problems to the doctor.

While Sasha had been unconscious Homer had gotten used to calling her that way, sank back into his chair and she leaned against her pillow. The old man returned to the table, where an opened notebook with ninety-six pages waited for him. He turned around the pen in his hand and continued at the place where had had been interrupted by the fevering girl.

"… But this time the return of the caravan had been delayed and so long that there was only one reason for it:

Something unknown must have happened, something terrible, something that not even the heavy armed and experienced soldiers who accompanied them nor their long and good relationship with hanza could have prevented.

The whole thing would have been a lot less unsettling if they could at least communicate with each other.

But there was something wrong with the telephone to the ring line, the connection had been gone since Monday and the troop who had been sent to the breaking point had returned without any success."

Homer raised his eyes and winched, the girl was standing directly behind him and looking over his shoulder at what he had scribbled down. Her curiosity seemed to be the only thing that kept her on her feet.

Embarrassed the old man turned the notebook on the other side.

"Are you waiting for inspiration?" She asked him.

"I am only at the very beginning." Mumbled Homer.

"And what happened to the caravan?"

"I don't know". He carefully framed the title with his pen. "The story isn't over for a long time yet. Lay down, you need to rest"

"But you decide how your book ends"

"In this book nothing is decided by me. I just write down everything that happened"

"Then it is even more decided by you." Said the girl sunken in thoughts. "Am I in it as well?"

Homer smiled. "I just wanted to ask for your permission"

"I'll think about it" she answered serious.

"Why are you writing this book?"

Homer stood up to talk to her from eye to eye.

Already after his last conversation with Sasha he had realized that her youth and missing experience created a wrong picture in her mind. At the strange station where they had taken her from, a year must have seemed as two. So she didn't answer the questions which he spoke out loud, but the ones that he left unspoken. And she only asked questions to which he himself had no answer.

He was counting on her honesty and how else could she ever be the heroine (not the drug, it is the female form of hero in English) of his book if not? He had to be honest as well, to not treat her like a child and to not cover her in silence. But he mustn't say any less then what he had already admitted to himself.

He said: "I want that people remember me. ME and those who were close to me. They don't know how the world was. The one that I have loved. That they hear the most important stuff that I have witnessed and realized. That my life wasn't in vain. That something remains of me"

"You are putting your soul into it?" She put her head oblique. "But it's just a notebook. It can be burned or lost"

"An uncertain place to store your soul, is it not?

Homer sighed. "No, I only need this notebook to bring everything into the right order. And so that I don't forget anything important as long as the story isn't finished.

When it is finished you would just have to tell it to some people. How I imagine it hopefully you don't need paper or a body to spread it."

"You have surely seen a lot that shouldn't have been forgotten." The girl shrugged her shoulder. "I don't have anything that would be worth writing down. Leave me out of the book. Don't waste paper on me.

"But you have everything in front of you…" Started Homer and had to think that he wouldn't live to see it.

The girl didn't react and homer already feared that she would close off to him again. He searched for the right words, trying to take everything back, but he tripped over and over again over his sorrows.

"What is the most beautiful thing that you can remember?" She suddenly asked. "The most beautiful?"

Homer hesitated. It was a strange idea to tell another person who he only had only known for two days his deepest inners. Not even Yelena he had told everything and she had always thought that on the wall of their chamber only a usual landscape of the city was hanging. Would a girl that had been underground for her whole live even be able to understand what he would tell her?

He decided that he would let it come to it: "Summery rain." He said.

Sasha's forehead got wrinkles, which looked strange.

"What is so beautiful about it?"

"Have you ever seen rain?"

"No." The girl shook her head. "Father didn't want me to go outside. I climbed up two or three times anyways, but I didn't like it up there at all. It is terrible when all around you there are no walls." Then she explained it to make sure that they were talking about the same thing. "Rain is when water comes from above, right?"

Homer didn't listen anymore. Again that day emerged from the distant past. Like a medium his body let the summoned ghost use it, gazed at into void and didn't stop speaking …

"The whole month had been dry and hot. My wife had been pregnant, she had always had breathing problems and then there was the heat … In the entire clinic there was only one fan and she complained how hot it was. I couldn't breathe well myself and I was very sorry. It was bad: For years we had tried to get children but without success and now the doctors scared us that we could receive a stillbirth.

Now she was under constant watch, but it would've been better for her to remain at home. The date for the birth had already passed but the pains didn't start. I couldn't take off every day of course. Somebody had once said that if you carry a child to long the risk of a stillbirth would increase. I didn't know what to do. As soon as I was finished with work I ran to the clinic and kept watch under her window. In the tunnels there was no cell phone network so at every station I checked if I had missed any calls. And then, suddenly there was the message from the doctor: Please call back right away. Until I had found a quiet place to think I had already buried my wife and child in my thoughts, the old, fearful idiot I was"

Homer went silent as if he was listening to the sound of the signal from the phone, waited if somebody picked up.

The girl didn't interrupt him. She spared her answers for later.

"Then a stranger's voice said: Congratulations, it's a boy. It sounds so easy: It's a boy. From the dead they had brought my wife back and then this miracle … I ran up and it was raining. A cold rain. The air had become so light, so clear. As if the city had lain under a dusty plastic foil and suddenly somebody had taken it away. The leaves shined, finally the sky was moving again and the houses looked so fresh. I ran along the Tverskaya, to the flower booth and cried because I was so happy. I had an umbrella but I didn't open it,

I wanted to get wet, wanted to feel the rain. I can't recount … It was like I had been born and saw the world for the first time. And also the world was fresh and new, as if they had just cut its life cord and bathed it for the first time.

As if everything had become new and as if it trying to make up for all the bad things that had happened. I would now have a second live: What I hadn't been able to accomplish, my son would accomplish. Everything there was just for us. In front of us …"

Again Homer was silent. He saw the ten storey high Stalin houses, the sinking, gradually pink turning nightly fog, heard the busy noise of the Tverskaya, breathed in the sweet, polluted air, closed his eyes and put his face into the summery monsoon. When he came back to himself, small raindrops shimmered on his cheeks and eyes.

Hastily he wiped them off with his sleeve.

"You know." Said the girl, not any less embarrassed.

"Maybe rain is something beautiful. I don't have memories like that. Can you spare some of them? If you want." She smiled at him. "You can include me in your book. Somebody has to be in charge how everything ends"

"It is still too early" said the doctor serious.

Sasha didn't know how she could explain this autocrat the importance of what she was asking him. She took a deep breath and readied another attack, but left it to a surly gesture of her hand and turned around.

"You are going to have to be patient. But because you are already on your feet and apparently feeling well you can go for a walk." The doctor packed his instruments into an old plastic bag and shook Homer's hand. "I'll be back in an hour.

The leadership of the station has ordered an especially thorough treatment in your case. After all we are in your debt"

Homer threw a dirty military jacket over to Sasha.

She stepped out of the room, followed the doctor past the other areas of the hospital, past a row of rooms and chambers full of desks and stretchers, then two staircases upwards, through an inconspicuous low door and then into a giant long hall. Sasha froze at the doorstep, unable to go on.

She had never seen something like that. It was past her imagination how many living people could live in one place.

Thousands of faces without masks! And so distinct from each another! There were humans of all ages, from old man to baby. Uncountable amounts of men: With beards, shaven, tall, small, tired, awake, emaciated and with muscles.

Those who had been mutilated in battle, those with birth errors, bright beauties and those that were unattractive on the outside, but emitted a mysterious pull. And not any less amount of women: Those with big butts, red faced broads, but also thin, pale girls with unbelievable colorful dressers and interlacing necklaces.

Would they recognize that Sasha was different?

Would she so she could vanish into this crowd act like she was one of them or would they gang up on her and tear her to pieces like a horde of rats would do to a strange albino? At first it seemed to her that all eyes were resting on her and with every new look she felt warmer and warmer. But after fifteen minutes she got used to it: Some looked at her hostile, some curious, some others too intrusive, but most weren't interested in her. They only passed Sasha indifferently with their eyes and pushed onwards immediately without taking notice.

It seemed to her that the scattered and blurry looks were the machine oil that lubricated the gears of this hectic mechanism. If those humans would be interested at each other the friction would be too big and the whole spectacle would stand still in the shortest amount of time.

To go under in this group you didn't need a new disguise or a new haircut. It was enough if you didn't look too deeply into the eyes of others but to leave their eyes after a short look. Every time she did that she still shivered. When Sasha would use this indifference it would be easy to continuously pass the interlocking inhabitants of the station without getting stuck at one place.

In the first minutes the cooking mix of human smell had numbed her nose but shortly after that her smell had learnt to filter out the important ones and ignore everything else. Through the sour smell of unclean bodies she smelled a luring, young, yes even pleasant aroma that went over the group like a wave. It was the perfume of a woman. The smell of grilled meat and the miasma of the trash pit mixed together. With one word: For Sasha this smell of the Pavelezkayas was the smell of life and the longer she took it in, the sweater it became for her.

To explore this long corridor she probably would have needed a month. Everything here was so overwhelming …

There were places where you could buy jewelry which was made out of dozens of yellow and minted metal discs which she could stare at for hours. There was a giant selection of books that had more secret knowledge in them than she would ever be able to accumulate.

A shopkeeper lured passing people with a stand with the words FLOWERS. He had a giant selection of feel better soon cards on which different bouquets of flowers were printed on. As a child she had once received a card like that, but how many of them were here!

She saw infants on the breasts of their mothers and older children that played with real cats. Couples that touched each other with their eyes and other that did the same with their hands.

Men tried to touch her. They could have mistaken her interest for some kind of invitation or as a wish to sell something to her, but a certain tone in their words was unpleasant to her, yes even disgusted her. What did they want from her? Weren't there enough women here? Many beauties were under them, covered in colorful dresses they looked like the open heads of the flowers on the cards. Sasha guessed that these men made fun of her.

Was she even able to get man curios because her?

Suddenly doubts started to bite deeper that she didn't even know she had. Maybe she understood everything wrong … But why should it be different? Something awoke painfully in her chest, under her rips, at that certain place that she only had discovered for herself a short while ago.

To get rid of her unrest she wandered along the shops again, where all kinds of wares were, bulletproof vests, normal clothing, machines, but she was almost no longer interested in them. Her inner voice had pushed out the noisy crowd into the background and the picture that her memories had painted were more plastic looking then the living humans around her

Had she been worth his life? Would they still be able to judge him for what he had done? And before all: What sense made those stupid thoughts now? Now that she couldn't do anything for him anymore …

Suddenly even before Sasha realized why, all doubts faded and her heart calmed down. She listened into herself and heard …. It was the faint echo of distant melody that came from where a large group of people had gathered.

Music that remembered Sasha like many people off the first goodnight songs her mother had sung for her. But she had to be content with only her mother's songs for years: Her father hadn't had any place for music and only sparsely ever sung, even wandering musicians and jesters hadn't been welcome at the Avtosvodskaya.

And when the guardsmen on their campfires croaked their heavy hearted and fiery military song neither the wrongly tuned wooden guitars nor Sasha's inner cords had swung with the melody.

But what she heard now was no boring jingling. It sounded like the soft voice of a young woman, yes of a girl but unreachable high for the human throat. It sounded uncompromised and powerful at the same time. But with what could she even compare this miracle?

The song of the unknown instrument cast a spell over the people who stood around, raised them high and carried them into to a never ending place, into worlds which all who had been born in the metro had never seen and which they probably couldn't have guessed. This music let the people dream and made them believe that all dreams could become reality. It awoke an incomprehensible longing and promised to fulfill it at the same time. And it gave Sasha the feeling as if she had wandered through an abandoned station for a long time when she had suddenly found a lamp and in the shine of the lamp, immediately the exit.

She was standing in front of the arms-smith. Directly in front of her was a plank of wood where different knives were screwed on, from a small pocked knife to murderous hand long daggers. Sasha watched them frozen, like the blades had cast a spell on her.

Inside of her a wild fight took place. A small tempting feeling emerged. The old man had given her a handful of bullets, just enough for the giant black knife with the jagged edge, a wide, sharp exemplar, that which was better suited for her plan than anything else.

After one minute Sasha had made a decision. She hid her treasure in the chest-pocked of her overall, if possible at the place where she wanted to fight the pain. When she stepped back into the hospital, she didn't feel the weight of her military jacked nor the pounding in her forehead.

The crowd towered over the girl and the musician who created these wonderful sounds in the distance remained invisible for her. The melody on the other hand seemed to catch up to her, to make her go back, as if it wanted to talk her down.

In vain.

Again it knocked on the door.

Homer rose groaning from his knees, wiped his lips with his sleeve and pulled the chain to flush. On the dirty green fabric of his jacked a brown stain had remained.

It had been the fifth time that he had thrown up in one day even though he actually hadn't eaten anything.

The symptoms could have had a different cause, he told himself. Why had the speed of the sickness been accelerated at all? Maybe it was because …

"Are you going to be finished soon?" Yelled an impatient voice. It was the voice of a woman.

Oh! Had he misread the letters on the door in his haste? Homer wiped the dirty sleeve over his sweat covered face, put on an unwavering face and pushed the bar to the side.

"Typical drunk!" A woman dressed up to the nines pushed him to the side and shut the door behind her.

Ok, thought Homer. They could believe that he was a drunk, which was a lot better than the truth. He stepped in front of the mirror which was over the sink and put his hot forehead against it. With time he could breathe again, he watched how the glass steamed up and winched: His respirator had slid down and was hanging under his chin.

Hastily he pushed it back in front of his face and closed his eyes. No, he couldn't consciously think about that he brought death to all humans that he met. To turn back was impossible: When he was infected, as far as he hadn't mistaken the symptoms, the whole station was going to die anyways. Starting with the women whose only fault was that she had to go "for little girls" at the wrong time. What would she do if he would tell her that she now only had a month to live at best?

How foolish, thought Homer. Foolish and stupid. He had wanted to make all immortal that crossed his path. Now fate had transformed him into an angel of death and one of the foolish and powerless kind. He felt like somebody had shortened his wings and told him: That an ultimatum of thirty days had been engraved on him. That was as much time as he had to act.

Was that the punishment for him overestimating himself and for his pride?

No he could no longer be silent. And there was only one human which he could open up to. He wouldn't be able to deceive him for long and it was easier for both when they played with open cards.

With unsure steps he made his way to the hospital.

The room was at the end of the hallway and usually a nurse sat in front of it but now the place was empty. Through the door slit he could hear a broken moaning. He could only make out single words and as long as Homer listened, he could t put them together to sentences that made sense.

"Stronger … Fighting … Must ... Still sense … Resistance … Remember … Still able … Mistake … Punishment …"

His words were now a barking, as if the pain had become unbearable and hindered the speaker to catch his rushing thoughts. Homer entered the room.

Hunter was lying unconscious, had spread his limbs and turned from one side to the other on a wet blanket. The bandage that pressed the head of the brigadier together had slipped over his eyes, the bony checks were covered in sweat and the unshaven lower jaw hung down limp.

His broad chest raised and lowered itself, struggling like the bellows of a forge that only kept the fire burning in the big body with struggle.

At the head end of the bet stood the girl with her back turned to him, her small hands behind her back. Not at first, but after a closer look he saw the silhouette of a black knife that she was holding cramped through the fabric of her overall.

The ringing.

Again and again.

2235

2236

2237

Artyom (yes, our Artyom) counted the sound not because he wanted to justify himself in front of the commander but because he wanted to feel some kind of movement. When he distanced himself from the point where he had started counting so that meant that with every ringing sound the point where this madness was over came closer.

Deceiving oneself? Yeah, probably. But listening to this ringing knowing that it will never stop was unbearable.

Even though at first, it had been the same thing after his very first deployment: Like a metronome it had brought order in the cacophony of his thoughts with its monotone sound, had emptied his head and calmed down his racing pulse.

The ringing cut down minutes of his shift and Artyom felt like he was in a trap made out of time out of which he couldn't escape. In medieval times there had been such torture: They had undressed a criminal and sat him under a barrel out of which never endingly water dropped onto his head. The cause was that the poor guy slowly lost his mind.

Where the stretch-table was without success, normal water brought extraordinary results …

Bound to the line of the telephone, Artyom didn't dare to distance himself just for one second. His whole shift he had tried not to drink so that no important need would lure him from the apparatus. Days before he hadn't been able to stand staying in the room, slipped out, hastily run to the exit and had returned immediately. Even on the doorstep he had listened and it had run down cold down his back: The frequency hadn't been right; the signal was now faster than before. That could only mean one thing: The moment that he had waited for was finally here when he had been gone.

Fearful he looked to the door if somebody had watched him and had quickly dialed the number again and pressed his ear against the telephone.

Out of the apparatus the same clicking sound emerged, the ringing started from anew - in the know rhythm.

From that moment the busy sound hadn't returned and nobody had picked up. Put Artyom didn't dare to put down the telephone ever again. Only from time to time he put it from his one already hot ear to his other, cramped trying not to miscount.

He hadn't said anything to the leadership and he wasn't even sure if he had heard anything but the eternal rhythm back then. His orders were: Call. For a week there had been only this task. Any violation would bring him in front of the tribunal and there they made no difference between mistakes and sabotage.

The telephone helped him to orientate how long he still had to sit here. Artyom didn't have his own watch, but the commander had told him, looking at his watch, that the signal repeated itself every five seconds. Twelve sounds were one minute, 720 an hour, 13 680 a whole shift. Like small grains of sand they dropped down from one part of a giant hourglass into another bottomless container. And between the two glasses, directly in the neck Artyom was stuck and listened to time.

Also he didn't put down the receiver because the commander could return every second to check on him.

Otherwise … What he did was absolutely pointless.

At the other end of the line apparently nobody seemed to be still alive.

He saw the from the inside barricaded office of the head of the station and him pressing his face against the plate of the table, the makarov still in his hand. With his shot through ears he could no longer hear the ringing sound. The ones that were on the other side of the door hadn't been able to break through, but through the keyhole and the door slit the desperate ringing crawled over the train platform where all the bloated bodies were lying … For a time you hadn't been able to here the ringing, the noise of the crowd, of the steps, the crying of the children had been too loud, but now it only disturbed the rest of the dead. The gradually dying emergency aggregates still spread their red blinking light.

The ringing.

Again.

2563

2564.

No reaction.


	11. Chapter 11

Gifts (Chapter 11)

Your report! You could say what you wanted; the commander was always good for a surprise. In the entire garrison they told legends about him. Once a mercenary he was skillful with knives and was known that nothing could turn his attention away from his tasks. Back then before he had settled down at the Sevastopolskaya he had massacred the outer guard post of an enemy station alone, using the slightest mistakes of the guards.

Artyom jumped up, pressed the receiver against his ear with shoulder, saluted and stopped, not without some regret, counting. The commander approached the schedule of duty, locked at his clock and put next to his thumb, 3rd November and the numbers 9:22, signed and turned to Artyom.

"My report: Nothing. I mean, nobody picked up"

"Silence?" The commander crackled with his jaws and loosened his neck muscles. "I just can't believe it"

"What?" Asked Artyom worried.

"That it has already hit the Dobryninskaya. Could the epidemic have already hit Hanza? Do you understand what is going if it has hit the ring line?"

"But we don't know anything for sure." Answered Artyom. "Maybe it has already started. We have no contact to them."

"What if the line is damaged?" The commander lowered his head and started to knock on the table.

"But then there was still a line to the base." Artyom nodded his head into the direction of the tunnel that lead to the Sevastopolskaya. "That one is completely dead. Here we get at least ringing. That means the line is still working"

"Only that the base seems to no longer need us." Said the commander calm. "You can't see anybody from there at the door. Maybe the base is no more. And no more Dobryninskaya. Listen to me, Popov, when nobody is alive there anymore, we die very soon and all of us as well.

Nobody is going to come to our help. Why still keep the quarantine up? Maybe we should forget about all this shit, what do you think?" Again his jaws moved.

Artyom was shocked. What heresy! He didn't want to but he had to think about the commander's habit to shot deserters into the stomach before reading them their sentence.

"No commander, the quarantine is necessary"

"What you don't say … Today alone three have become sick. Two from here and one of us. And Akopov is dead"

"Akopov?" Artyom swallowed and closed his eyes. His mouth felt dry.

"Beat his head in on the track." Continued the commander with the same calm voice." He had said that he couldn't take the pain anymore. Not the first case. It got to hurt like hell when you try for half an hour to beat in your skull or what?

"Yes, sir." Artyom turned his head.

"And what's with you? Nausea? Weakness?" asked the commander worried and shined his small flashlight into Artyom's face. "Open your mouth and say Ahhh. Good.

Listen up, Popov. You see that finally somebody picks up. Somebody has to pick up, Popov, at the Dobryninskaya and they shall say that Hanza has a vaccine and are reading sanitary brigades who are going to be here soon. And that they are going the get the healthy out. And heal the sick. And that we don't have to stay in this hell forever. That we will get back to our wives. And you to your Galya and I to Alyona and Vera, understood?"

"Yes, sir!" Artyom nodded his head cramped.

"At ease"

His long knife hadn't been able to resist the weight of the falling down beast and had broken exactly over the handle. The blade had penetrated deep into the chest of the creature so that they hadn't even tried to get it back out of it.

The bold one who had been scared by the claws of the beast had been unconscious for almost three days.

Sasha couldn't help him but she still had to see him.

At least to think about him, even though he couldn't hear her.

But the doctors didn't let her to him. They said the injured man needed rest before all.

She didn't know exactly why the bold one had killed the people on the railcar. But if he had shot to save her then that was enough of a reason to her. She tried to believe in it but she couldn't. Probably there was a different explanation:

Instead of asking, he rather killed.

At the Pavelezkaya it had been different: He had followed Sasha and had been ready to die for her. Was there actually a connection between them?

Like back then, at the Kolomenskaya when he had yelled after her, she had waited for a bullet not the question to come with them. But when she had turned around she had recognized a change in him, even though his scary face hadn't moved a bit. It had been his eyes: Suddenly she had seen somebody else through the black pupils and looked at her.

Somebody who was interested in her.

Somebody who she had to be thankful for her live.

Should she give him a silver ring, the same gesture like back then from her mother? What if the bold one didn't understand a gesture like that? But how should she thank him instead?

To give him a knife, as a replacement for the one which he had lost because of her, at that was least something.

When she had been totally illuminated by this simple thought, standing in front of the weapons-smith and imagining how she would give him the blade, how he would look at her, what he would say, she totally forget that she would buy a murderer another tool with it he would slit throats and stomachs.

No, in this moment he wasn't a bandit for her but a hero, no killer but a warrior and before all – a man. And there was another, obscure thought in her head: Since his blade had broken, he hadn't awoken. Maybe he would be a whole blade again … Like an amulet … So she had bought it for him.

And now that she was standing in front of his bed and hid the present behind her back Sasha hoped that he reacted to it or at least feel the presence of the blade. the bold one twitched from one sided to the other , made croaking sounds, started single words, moaned but didn't awoke.

Darkness had him strongly in its grasp.

Up until now Sasha hadn't said his name one single time, neither loud or to herself. No she whispered it to him.

"Hunter!"

The bold one went silent, he seemed to listen as if he was unimaginably far away and her voice was only an almost inaudible echo to his ear, but he didn't answer. Sasha repeated it again, loader. She wouldn't stop until he would open his eyes. She would be his tunnel light.

From the hallway she heard she a surprised scream, boots started to hammer on the ground. She kneeled down fast and put the knife on the small table at the head end of his stretcher. "That's for you." She said.

Suddenly the iron hard fingers held on to her hand, so strong that they could have broken all of her bones in her hand. The eyes of the injured man were open, his look wandered around without any goal. "Thanks." He mumbled.

The girl had no intentions to free herself.

"What are you doing here?" A thin boy with a dirty white coat put a needle in the bold mans arm which brought him to sleep immediately again. Then the nurse grabbed Sasha by her shoulders and he said with closed teeth: "Don't you understand? In his condition … The doctor has forbidden …"

"You're the one who doesn't understand! He needs something that he can hold on to. From your needles he is just getting weaker …" The nurse tried to push Sasha into the direction of the exit, but she had already taken the steps and looked at him with angry eyes.

"I don't want to see you in here again! And what is this here?" He had found the knife.

"That's … His." Mumbled Sasha. "I brought it with me. If he hadn't been there … Those things would have torn me to pieces."

"And the doctor is going to tear me to pieces when he is going to find out." Growled the nurse. "Now go!"

Sasha hesitated for a moment and then she turned to Hunter again who was still sleeping heavily sedated and ended what she had wanted to say: "Thank you, you saved me"

When she was leaving the room she suddenly heard his croaky voce: "I just wanted to kill it … That beast …"

The door was shut right in front of her face and the key fell into the look.

The knife had been for something else. That had Homer realized immediately when he had heard how she called the name of the fevering brigadier, asking soft and sorrowful at the same time. At first he hadn't wanted to get involved but then he thought about it differently and turned way, here was nobody that needed to be protected from something. All he could do was to retreat as fast as possible so he wouldn't scare Sasha off.

Maybe she was right. At the Nagatinskya Hunter had totally forgotten about his companions. He had thrown them in front of the ghostly zyklops as a meal. But in this fight …

Maybe the girl meant something to him?

Sunken in thoughts homer strolled along the hallway and went to his room at the hospital. A nurse bumped into him, but the old man didn't even realize it.

It was time to give Sasha what he had bought for her.

It seemed she would need it very soon.

Out of the desks drawer he brought a package to the light and turned it in his hands. After a few minutes the girl stormed into the room, nervous, confused and angry. She sat onto the bed, pulled her legs up and stared into the corner.

Homer waited until the storm would start or pass him. Sasha was silent and started to gnaw on her fingernails.

It was time to intervene.

"I got a gift for you." The old man came forth from behind the table and put the package next to the girl on the blanket.

"For what?" She said, without coming out of her snail house.

"Why do people give gifts to each other?"

"To repay good things." She said convinced. "For what you have gotten or for what you hope to get"

"Then let's say that I am repaying for all the good things that you have already given me. For I don't need anything else"

"I didn't give you anything." Answered Sasha

"And what about my book?" He made a jokingly, offended face. "You're already in it. I don't like owing something to somebody. Now come on, open it"

"I don't like to owing something as well." Said Sasha and ripped open the wrappings of the package. "What's this? Oh!"

In her hand was a red disk of plastic, a small box that could be opened from both sides. Back then it had been a cheap makeup box for when you were traveling, but both compartments for powder and rouge were already empty. But the mirror on the inside had survived.

"Here you can see yourself better then in a puddle of water." Sasha looked with her big eyes at her reflection. It looked strange. "Why did you give this to me?"

"Sometimes it is better to see yourself from the side"

Homer was grinning. "You'll understand more about yourself"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Sasha s voice had become more careful.

"There are people who have never seen their own reflection in their entire life and because of that they think that they are someone entirely different. And if the stand in front of their reflection they often can't believe who is standing in front of them"

"And how am I seeing?"

"You tell me." He crossed his arm in front of his chest. "Myself. Well … A girl" To be sure she turned the mirror from one cheek to the other.

"A young women." Corrected Homer. "And a very unkempt one"

She turned from one side to the other a few times, blinked at homer as if she wanted to ask something, thought about it again, went silent for a moment and gathered all her courage and said: "Am I ugly?"

The old man cleared his throat. He had to keep himself from laughing. "Hard to say. Under all that dirt you can't really tell"

Sasha raised her eye brows. "What's the problem?

Don't men have a feeling for if a woman is beautiful or not? Do you always have to show and explain?"

"Seems like it. And women often use that to deceive us." Homer had to laugh. "Makeup can work wonders on a female face. But in your case it is not about repairing a portrait but to free it. When you can only see the foot of an antic statue you can't really tell how it looks like."

Then he added: "Even though there is a great chance that it is beautiful."

"What does antic mean?" Asked Sasha unsure.

"Old." Homer was having his fun.

"I am only seventeen!"

"We are going to know. After the excavation"

The old man leaned back to his table, opened the notebook at the last page he had written on and started to read through his notes again. Suddenly his face darkened.

If anybody digs us up one day … The girl, himself and all others. What if in thousands of years archeologists would explore the ruins of Moscow from which not even the name was known and suddenly found the entrance to this underground labyrinth? Probably they would think it was a gigantic mass grave. Nobody would believe that in thesee dark catacombs humans could have lived. They would come to the decision that this highly advanced culture had become only a few in its last days and that they had buried their leaders with all of their possessions, weapons, servants and concubines.

His book had a mere eighty free pages. If that would be enough to house both worlds in it: The one on the surface and the one in the metro?

"Can't you hear me?" The girl shook his arm.

"What? Sorry, I was sunken in thoughts." He wiped his forehead.

"Are antic statues really beautiful? I mean what the people found beautiful back then can it still be today?"

The old man shrugged his shoulders. "Yes"

"And tomorrow as well?"

"Possible. When somebody is still left to judge them"

Sasha went silent and thought about something.

Homer didn't try to carry the conversation forward but he sunk back into his own thoughts.

After some time she asked surprised: "So that means without humans there is no beauty?"

"Probably not." He answered a bit confused. "When nobody can see it … Animals aren't able …"

"But if animals distinct themselves from humans because they don't know the difference between beauty and ugliness can humans even exist without beauty?"

The old man shook his head. "Of course, certainly.

There are many that don't need it"

Now the girl took a strange thing out of her pocket:

A small quadratic piece of plastic with a drawing on it.

Shy and at the same time proud, like she was showing her a biggest treasure and held it into Homers direction.

"What's that?"

"You tell me." A smart smile hushed over her face.

"Well." He took the small quadratic piece of plastic carefully out of her hand, read the print and gave it back to the girl. "That's the packaging of a teabag. With a picture on it"

"A beautiful picture." She corrected him. "If not for this, I would've become an animal …"

Homer looked at her. He felt how his eyes filled with tears and breathing got harder for him. Sentimental idiot!

He cursed himself. He cleared his throat and sighed.

"Have you never been on the surface, in the city? I mean except this one time?"

"No, and?" Sasha put the packaging back into her pocket. "Do you want to tell me that out there it isn't like on this picture? That there is nothing like this anymore? I now that already. I know how the city looks like, the houses, the bridge and the river. Destroyed and empty"

"Not at all." Answered Homer. "I have never seen anything more beautiful. You act like you wanted to judge the entire metro by the one platform you've seen. How am I supposed to describe it? Building higher than the mountains, big streets flowing like the river on the mountain. A sky that never got dark and shining fog … A very, ambitious, short-lived city, just like every one of its millions of former inhabitants.

Crazy and chaotic. Influenced by trying to combine what can't be combined. Build without any plan. But so alive!"

His hands became fists, like he was angry at the world.

"You can't understand that. You should've seen it with your own eyes …" At that moment he was convinced that she just had to go to the surface so that she could see everything like himself. He never realized that she had never seen the city in its living condition.

Homer hadn't talked to anybody and they had lead them through the barricade to Hanza and the whole neighboring stations, to the offices where the bath was. Under guard, like if they were lead to the henchman's block.

The only thing that the two Pavelezkaya's had in common was the name. They were like two sisters that had been separated from birth and the one had grown up with a rich family and the other at a poor station, or even in a tunnel.

The rooms were dirty and run-down, but bright and roomy. The ring station made a more crouched, edgy impression, but it was always lit and polished. They must have caravans and merchants coming through. At this time nothing was going on, who didn't work seemed to favor the masses of the neighboring station and not the strictness of the ring.

In the dressing room Sasha was alone. The walls were covered with yellow tiles and on the ground were hexagonal and broken tiles. There were also painted iron cabinets for shoes and clothes , a light bulb on a cable, two benches covered in scratched, artificial leather … She couldn't stop looking around.

She took an unbelievable white towel and a heavy, quadratic piece of grey soap. Then she locked the shower from the inside.

The small quadratic towel, the a little bit disgusting smell of the soap, all that was part of a distant past for Sasha when she had been the loved and protected daughter of the commander. She had already forgotten that all those things still existed.

Hastily she took off her clothes which were covered in dirt and jumped under the rusty pipe of the self made shower.

With a bit of effort she turned the valve and almost burned her hand, the water was hot! She pressed herself against the wall so that she could move out of the way of the water and turned the other one. Finally when the she had found the right mixture she stopped dancing around … And stepped into the water.

The water washed away the dust, ash, machine oil and blood, her own and the blood of other people, tiredness, sorrow, guilt and doubts down the drain. It took some time until the water which was running down the drain got clear again.

Was that enough so that the old man wouldn't make fun of her anymore?

Sasha looked at her clean feet as if they weren't her own, and then she looked at the unusual white hands. Was that enough so that men would recognize her beauty?

Maybe Homer had been right and it had been foolish to visit the injured man before she had cleaned herself up. She probably still had to learn those things.

Would he recognize that she had changed? She stopped the water, went back to the dressing room and opened her new mirror … No it was impossible to not recognize it!

She had relaxed in the hot water and all her doubts had been silenced. What the bold one had said about the beast hadn't been destined for her, but had been part of a heavy struggle in his dream. He hadn't said no to her. She just had to wait until he woke up again. If she was with him at that point he would understand. And then? Why should she think about it now? She knew enough that she could trust herself with him.

Again she thought how the bold one had turned from side to the other in his fever. Without knowing why she knew that he had been searching for her. She could bring him rest, peace and bring him into balance again. She felt warm when she thought about him.

They had taken the dirty overall from her and had promised to wash it. Instead she got bright blue jeans and a sweater with a few holes in it. The new clothes were too small for her and when she went back to the guard post she could feel the looks of all men on her, so that Sasha felt like she had to take another shower before she got back to her bed.

The old man wasn't in his room but she wasn't alone for long. After a few minutes the door was opened and the doctor stepped in.

"You can now visit him." He said "He's awake"

"What's the date?"

The brigadier put his weight on his elbow, put his head back and forth and starred at homer. He reached at for wrist immediately, even though he hadn't had a watch in years. Then he spread his arms and shrugged his shoulders.

The nurse intervened. "The second. November"

"Three days". Hunter fell back down onto his pillar.

"I've been laying here for three days. We got to go or we'll be too late"

"You won't get far." Said the nurse. "You almost had no more blood in you"

"We got to go." Repeated the brigadier. "Time is running out … The bandits …" Suddenly he stopped. "Why do you need a respirator?"

Homer knew the question had to come sooner or later. He had had three days to build his defenses and organize to fight back. Hunter being unconscious had kept him from realizing; now he had a well thought-out lie ready.

He lowered his head over the bed of the injured man and whispered: "There are no bandits. While you were fevering … You have been talking the entire time. I know everything"

"What do you know?" Hunter grabbed him by his collar and dragged him to him.

"From the epidemic at the Tulskaya … It's alright"

Homer waved at the nurse who had wanted to come to his aid. "I can do this. I have to talk to him. Would you be so kind …"

Only reluctantly the nurse gave up, put the cover back on the needle and left them alone.

"About the Tulskaya …" Hunter had still fixed his red eyes on him but his iron hard grip loosened gradually.

"Nothing else?"

"Only that some kind unknown infection has broken out at the station. That it is transferred over the air. And that our guys have put up quarantine and wait for help"

"If you say so. Ok …" The brigadier let go of him

"Yes it is an epidemic. And you're afraid to infect yourself?"

"Be on your guard then god helps you." Answered homer carefully.

"Yes, Yes. It's alright … I wasn't close and the air was moving in the other direction … Nothing should have happened"

Homer found his courage again. "Why that story with the bandits? What's your plan?"

"First to the Dobryninskaya, to make a deal. Then to clean the Tulskaya. We need flamethrowers. We can't do it otherwise …"

"Burn down the entire station? What's with our guys?"

Homer hoped that his words were just another try to get him away from the truth like he had lead the commanding officers of the Sevastopolskaya astray.

"They are already walking corpses. There's no way out. All who have contact with the infected infect themselves.

The entire air is infected. I've heard of this disease …" Hunter closed his eyes und licked over his bloody lips with his tongue. "There is no cure. A few years ago we had a similar outbreak. Two thousand deaths"

"But then it stopped?"

"There was a siege. Flamethrower." The brigadier turned his scared face to him. "There is no other way. If there's an outbreak and only one human gets through …

That's it for us. Yes that with the bandits was a lie.

Otherwise Istomin would've never agreed to kill all of them. He is too soft. I am going to get people that don't ask any questions."

"But what if there are still people that are immune against it? What if there are still healthy people there? I … You've said … Maybe there is still somebody with who we can talk …"

"There is no immunity." cut the brigadier him off.

"All that got in contact get infected. There are no more healthy ones there, only those that last longer. And it is going to be worse for them. They will have to suffer longer.

Believe me it's better for them if I … If they are killed"

"What is going to bring you that?" Homer stepped back from Hunters stretcher and again he realized that the eye on his scarred side of the face didn't fully close. Hunter waited so long with his answer that the old man already wanted to call the doctor again.

But then the brigadier spoke slowly, stretched, with closed teeth, as if I was under hypnosis and was looking for lost memories in his past: "I have. To defend humanity.

Eliminate all threats. I am only there for that"

Had he found the knife? Had he understood that it was from her?" What if he wouldn't guess it and see no promise in it? She flew along the hallway and chased away those angry thoughts. She had no idea what she would say to him … To bad that she hadn't been able to stand at his bed when he had awoken …

Sasha had almost heard the entire conversation.

Silently she had listened on the doorstep and had winched when he had talked about the killing. Of course she hadn't understood everything but she didn't have to. She had heard the most important parts, there was no more use in waiting. So she knocked on the door.

When the old man turned around she could see the despair in his face. He almost didn't move as if this time they had given him the injection to calm him down and had extinguished the flame in his eyes. He nodded at Sasha weak willed, it looked like a death candidates rope had been raised up.

The girl sat onto the edge of the chair, bit on her lip and held her breath before she entered this new and unexplored tunnel. "Do you like my knife?"

"What knife?" The bold one locked around and saw the black blade. His face didn't move but looked at Sasha distrusting. "What is that supposed to mean?"

It was like somebody had punched her right in the face. "That is for you. Yours broke. As you … Thank …"

A few moments uncomfortable silence hung in the room. Than the bold one said: "Strange gift. Wouldn't accept it from anybody." She believed to hear something like a clue in his words, something with a second meaning and left unspoken. She accepted the game without knowing its rules and started to reach for fitting words. What emerged was clumsy, not making any sense, but Sasha's tongue wasn't used to describing what was going on inside of her"

"Don't you feel that you carry a part of me inside of you? That piece that they have ripped out of you … That you were searching for … That I have given back to you?"

"What are you talking about?"

It was like somebody had emptied a bucket of cold water over her head. Sasha was shivering but she stood her ground. "You feel it. That you are complete with me. That I can be near you and that I have to. Why else would you have taking me with you?"

"I did my partner a favor" his look was empty.

"Why did you defend me against the people on the railcar?"

"I would have killed them anyways"

"Why did you safe me from that beast?"

"I have to kill them all"

"It should have eaten me!"

"You're not happy to be alive?" He asked surprised.

"Then you just have to go up the escalator. There're more of them."

"I … You want, that I …"

"I want nothing from you"

"I am going to help you to stop!"

"You're clinging on to me"

"Don't you feel anything, that …"

"I don't feel anything" His words tasted like rusty water.

Even the grotesque claw of the pale monster couldn't have hit that deep. Surprised Sasha jumped up and ran out of the room.

She looked into the room and it was empty. She fell down at the corner, rolled up, was looking in her pocket for her mirror, to throw it away but she didn't find it. It must have fallen out of her pocket in the room of the bold one.

When her tears had dried, she knew what she would do. There was no time to pack. The old man would forgive her for taking his Kalashnikov, he would forgive her everything. In the room next to her she found her radiation suit hanging on a hook, cleaned and decontaminated. As if a magician had emptied the dead body of the fat man into which Sasha had to step into again and again. Following her for eternity.

She slipped into it, walked out the room into the corridor with heavy steps and through the door onto the train platform. Somewhere she heard the faint echo of the magical music; she hadn't had time to find its origin. Only for a moment she stopped … But then she resisted the temptation and approached her goal.

When it was day there was only one guard at the escalator. As long as it was bright outside the creatures left the inhabitants of the station alone.

Sasha didn't even need five minutes to explain her situation: The way to the surface was always open. It was impossible though to take the escalator back down. She gave half of her magazine to the willing guard and put her foot onto the first step that would lead her to the sky.

Then she raised her leg and began to climb up.


End file.
